But on legal topics, also, the lawyer or the law student will find much valuable information.
American Law
He should read the stimulating and suggestive article on American Law (Vol. 1, p. 828), by Simeon E. Baldwin, governor of Connecticut, professor of constitutional and private international law at Yale, and formerly chief justice of the Supreme Court of Errors, Connecticut. Governor Baldwin’s article points out the general identity of origin of American and English law, with the important exception of territory formerly French or Spanish,—particularly Louisiana,—a point on which the reader will find fuller information in the articles Louisiana (Vol. 17, p. 57) and Edward Livingston (Vol. 16, p. 811). Besides he calls attention to the fact that the state and not the nation is for the most part the legislative unit and the legislative authority. And this leads to a consideration of the great part played in American jurisprudence by the Civil War and the consequent changes in the Federal Constitution, especially the Fourteenth Amendment, which has been the basis of so many recent cases in the Supreme Court and has “readjusted and reset the whole system of the American law of personal rights” by transferring final jurisdiction from state to Federal courts.
Within the Southern states the Reconstruction period affected local law in various ways: by putting political power into the hands of outsiders (“carpet baggers,” etc.), by the social revolution consequent on the abolition of slavery, and by the commercial assimilation of the South to the North.
Governor Baldwin points out that the judicial department has been made partly administrative by the artificial distribution under most state constitutions of governmental powers into executive, legislative and judicial, overlooking the administrative, and making the courts the interpreters of statutes and giving to them the power of deciding whether or not statutes are constitutional.
That the police powers of the states are more and more liberally interpreted by the Federal Supreme Court is an interesting tendency, especially when the student remembers that in the last year or so certain states (notably Washington, c. 74, Laws 1911, Compensation of Injured Workmen) have definitely stated the police power as the basis of acts which the state supreme court might otherwise have declared unconstitutional as depriving of property without due process of law.
The article on American law is supplemented:
(a) in a general way by the valuable contribution of James Bryce (author of The American Commonwealth, and late British ambassador to the United States) on the Constitution and Government of the United States and of the states (Vol. 27, p. 646—an article which would fill about 50 pages of this Guide).
State Statutes
(b) more particularly, under the articles on the separate states (as well as on Alaska, Hawaii, Philippines and Porto Rico), by the description of the state or local constitution with an outline of characteristic and peculiar statutes. For instance, in the article Alabama (Vol. 1, p. 459), the first in the Britannica on a separate state of the Union, there is a general sketch of the constitution and government with particular attention to these points: term of judiciary, 6 years; legislative sessions, quadrennial; law against lobbying; executive may not succeed himself; sheriffs whose prisoners are lynched may be impeached; grandfather clause, practically disfranchising the negro—with a summary of Giles v. Harris, 189 U. S. 474; Jim Crow law; disfranchisement for vote-buying or selling; Australian ballot law; anti-pass law; freight rebate law; homestead exemptions; wife’s earnings separate property; women and child labour laws; peonage; liquor laws.