JAMES H. CARTWRIGHT.

trial courts in instructions and upon the courts of review in argument. In any writing prolixity is not evidence of thoroughness of examination or profundity of thought. It tends rather to obscure ideas and diminish their force than to make them clear or easily comprehended. The greatest help to the court is to leave out the trash, and devote the argument to discussing the real questions in the case, and to applying and distinguishing the authorities and cases cited in the briefs.

It is essential that the argument should be systematically subdivided and paragraphed, so that each subject may be readily found and referred to. This should not be carried, however, to the extent of subdividing into diminutive heads with infinitesimal differences, since that does not enhance precision, but oftener produces uncertainty.

Statements of the evidence will be necessary in cases where a reversal of the judgment is sought on the ground that the conclusion reached in the trial court was wrong on the facts, and where the court of review has power to reverse for that reason, and in other cases so far as necessary to show that errors committed were or were not prejudicial. As the court will read the evidence at length in the abstract it is not desirable to have it, or considerable portions of it, transferred bodily into the argument, and it will be better to state the substance only in the argument.

There is no fixed form or pattern for argument, so far as I know, to be recommended as superior to all others. If counsel understands the facts and their weight and significance, and knows the rules of law and the power and use of them, he will generally present them in such a way as to give the courts like understanding, and by his brief and argument aid in reaching a correct conclusion.

SPECIAL ADDRESS.

SPECIAL ADDRESS.

THE ART OF WRITING LAW BOOKS.

MARTIN L. NEWELL, OF SPRINGFIELD.

The question as to how law books are made is not an easy one for me to answer, although as an industry it seem to have grown to enormous proportions, and the making of them in great numbers is no uncommon thing in these later days. So far as the work of the author, or perhaps I should say the compiler, is concerned, I am not aware that it has been reduced to a science, and I presume that each writer has his own peculiar methods. At best the law writer is but a gleaner; his work must be confined to precedents, and when he forsakes these he is wandering in unexplored regions. The chief merit, I apprehend, of a law book is in the kind of material selected and the sorting and classifying of it.

Of the methods of other law writers I know absolutely nothing, and so must of necessity speak only of my own. To best illustrate my own method I have decided to describe, as well as I can, the manner in which I compiled the work on Libel and Slander.

In the preparation of the work it was my aim to gather from the reported cases of the courts of last resort in all English-speaking countries, the principles of the law and the remedies afforded for that class of wrongs known as libel and slander, as exemplified in the adjudicated cases from the earliest periods to the present time, and to arrange and make, so far as I was able, an intelligent classification of the same into one book containing the entire law upon the subject.

As a beginning, I divided the work into such divisions as naturally suggested themselves. First, a brief historical review of the law of defamation was considered appropriate in point of position, if not in point of importance. Next, the two great divisions of the subject: (1) Libels or defamation by writings, pictures, effigies and other

MARTIN L. NEWELL.

representations; and (2) Slander, or oral defamation. After this came in natural order imputation of crime, imputation of a want of chastity or the commission of adultery or fornication, defamation affecting persons in office, professions and trades; defamatory words imputing disease; slander of property; and then, publication of defamatory matter; certainty of imputation; construction of language; interpretation of defamatory words; malice; repetition of defamatory matter; parties; privileged communications; criticism and comment; pleadings; evidence and damages. To each of which divisions, for convenience, I affixed numbers. This task having been accomplished, I procured a number of paste-board boxes of suitable size and form, upon which I pasted labels corresponding in number and subject, to the divisions of the work.

Preliminary to the work of collecting the material for the book I made lists of the leading cases upon the subject of libel and slander in each of the states, for this purpose using the digests of the reports. This being done, I began the work of reading the cases, the latest first, and so on, continuing until the earliest case was reached and every one read. In reading the latest first, I reaped the benefit of any comments the court had made upon the earlier cases, as well as frequently the citation of other authorities in connection therewith.

I elected to read the decisions of our own Supreme Court first, because I felt more familiar with them. Next I took up the decisions of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Then those of the different courts of the State of New York, and so on laboriously, day by day, until I had completed the task so far as the reading of American decisions was concerned. The same process was repeated with the English decisions, but it was not so thorough.

As the reading of the cases progressed, if any acceptable matter for the work was found, it was extracted; if suitable for a section it was written out with the case cited, as the first authority in support of the text; if suitable for a note it was put in that form, and the sheet with the extracted portion of the case written upon it was numbered corresponding to its appropriate division and placed in the proper box. When cases were found containing nothing of importance, or which were mere repetitions of other cases in the same series of reports, they were usually passed by without notice or citation.

Perhaps I can make myself better understood by an illustration of the manner in which this part of the work was done. In reading the case of Rearick v, Wilcox, 81 Illinois Reports, page 77, I found