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Criminal Law Revision In California, Arthur H. Sherry

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The high water mark of criminal law reform in California was reached in 1872 when the legislature, after at least a decade of indifference to requests for action, adopted the Penal Code, the Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure.' This emergence into the company of contemporary pioneers of codification, Louisiana and New York, was a source of complacent pride, but it proved to be completely ineffective as a stimulus for continuing revision or even further codification. Renewed interest in improving and modernizing the law was not apparent until well into the twentieth century. When this interest did appear, …