Law Commons^™

Laws Without Order: The Price The U.S. Pays For No Codes, James R. Maxeiner

James R Maxeiner

Codification is a ubiquitous feature of modern legal systems. Codes are hailed as tools for making law more convenient to find and to apply than law found in court precedents or in ordinary statutes. Codes are commonplace in most countries. Most reports and presentations at the Congress deal with how codification is effected and not with whether it is.

The United States is anomalous. It does not have true codes. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when many countries adopted systematic civil, criminal and procedural codes, the United States considered, but did not adopt such codes.

Where other reports …