Papers read before the Medico-legal Society of New York, from its organization : Third series. 1875-1878 / Printed by a committee of the Medico-legal Society.

  • Medico-Legal Society of New York
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Papers read before the Medico-legal Society of New York, from its organization : Third series. 1875-1878 / Printed by a committee of the Medico-legal Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    fitness of those principles as criteria of rights, obligations or responsibilities. The liberation of a principle of law from the entanglement of antique limitations ; the extension of that principle or of some engraftment upon it to cases which could not have arisen when it was promulgated ; the modifi- cation of rigid rules to meet new emergencies ; the proclama- tion by judicial utterance that a rule has ceased to apply be- cause the reason of the rule has ceased, are matters so diffi- cult, requiring so much knowledge, intelligence and courage, that in the absence of legislation few Judges would assume the responsibility of attempting to accomplish them. It is better to cling to old land-marks, it is said, than to map out new boundaries, and this undoubtedly describes the dis- position of the average of the Judiciary. The radical changes in our laws during the last two centuries, which have been af- fected by causes other than direct and definite legislation, are not numerous except as they may have arisen from the de- velopment and extension of the jurisdiction of Courts of Chanceiy, and the adoption of equitable remedies Indeed it may be rightfully claimed that the whole of our Equity juris prudence, historically considered is nothing but the record of the triumphs of reformers over this tendency of the law to stagnate ; these victories being wrought into a system of prac- tical devices to correct the inflexibility of common law dic- tates. The insufficiency of these devices to answer any pur- pose of permanent improvement was, however, soon made manifest, for they in their turn, acted upon by the habit of the Courts, soon passed into authority and became obdurate and unyielding rules. The words of Sir Thomas Browne are as appropriate now as they were two hundred years ago : The mortalest enemy unto knowledge, and that which has done the greatest execution upon truth, hath been a peremp- tory adhesion unto authority, and more especially^ the estab- lishing of our beliefs upon the dictates of antiquity. For (as every capacity may observe) most men of ages present so su- perstitiously do look on ages past, that the authorities of the one exceed the reasons of the other. [Essay on Vulgar Er- rors.] The incongruities and ineptitudes in the relations between