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Show -79- even without the consent of Congress* confer and negotiate together about their common interestsf In fact* for seventeen years many of them have held annual conferences to promote uniformity of state legislation. Signs are not wanting that the public will further this movement, and even demand con- sent for their commonwealths to agree as well as to negotiate upon certain important general concerns* Such a prospect is not inconsistent with state autonomy. Freedom of contract is liberty, not thraldom. Each party gains advantages equivalent to that which it yields. Otherwise the outlook would be dubious, for inde- pendence and diversity of state legislation are necessary in their place. Those who must abide local regulations can best determine them. Delegated sovereignty must not travel too far from its original pro- prietors. Even a public policy good for all the states may be ascertained more quickly and more surely through concurrent state experiments than through successive national experiments. A uniform public opinion may dis- charge itself, like a lordly river, as easily and more naturally through a delta of many channels than through one outlet. Indeed, as Ambassador Bryce remarks, the very division and subdivision and balancing of public powers in this country, instead of weakening, has rather tended to render homogen- eous and omnipotent the very public opinion that must animate any movement toward compacts for mutual and uniform action among the states. Our fellowship of kindred minds has already evolved a system of laws and comities surprisingly harmonious under the ciroumstances. Legisla- tures imitate each other* Courts respect sister courts, and even sometimes accord them what is in effect a certain extra-territorial jurisdiction. The federal judiciary exerts a steadying and unifying influence. All this is muoh beyond what the Constitution exacts from any state. Good law proves contagious, as Robert G« Ingersoll onoe said health ought to be contagious. Now^ wherever uniformity and reciprocity of laws among the states is proper and possible without actual pre-arrangement, there public opinion will make the substance of the law uniform. But this does not answer the whole question. Democracies are expected, ever since Blackstone, following Montesquieu, pointed out their characteristic virtue, to succeed in "direct- ing the end of a law," but lack still to invent the means for achieving that end* Hence, whatever community of purpose the people impart to the laws of their several states, the paths pursued to reach the goal will diverge, and from time to time will deviate. Or, if this rambling tendency is on the way to be neutralized, there yet remains what may be called a residual diversity of enactment and interpretation; that is* a diversity affecting not the jural substance, but only legal forms and technicalities* These are the clothing of the lawf not the law itself. They are accidents, not attributes* Respecting them the reigning public expresses no opinion and entertains none, while law-making assemblies and judges alike go eacfci his own way; sometimes, as if in jealous assertion of authority for its own sake, supporting exquisite distinctions with subtle reasons. Experts are the epicures of their specialties. They indulge their own tastes* Civilians worry themselves about the antinomies of the Roman Law* |
