common sense, simple, directly functioning and efficient system of court organization. And alongside this were the activities of the Committee on Uniform State Laws of the American Bar Association, one of the most potent influences for breaking down the complications introduced into the relations of American citizens by the peculiar survival of the theory of the foreignness of each particular state to all of the other states, so that citizens of one state doing business with citizens of another state might in the event of ensuing litigation be confronted with the necessity of conforming to different laws administered under an entirely different procedure.

As to the uniform state laws, the principle of such uniformity, that is as to its desirability in regard to matters in respect of which there never was any substantial defensible reason for diversity, has been recognized and approved by every state of the Union.

In the report of the Committee on Uniform State Laws made to the American Bar Association in 1916, it was said that "the adoption by the various states of uniform state laws which the conference of commissioners has proposed from time to time, has been continuous and increasingly enthusiastic." The committee reports that the Negotiable Instruments Act has been adopted in forty-seven states, the Uniform Warehouse Receipts Act in thirty states, and the Uniform Sales Act in fourteen states. In addition that committee prepared and submitted for adoption uniform acts on divorce, stock transfer, family desertion, probate of foreign wills, marriage evasion, partnership, workmen's compensation and cold storage, and offered with its report of 1916 a uniform land registration act.*

The American Judicature Society at the same time had been seeking to frame a model act for the organization of courts, a model practice act and model court rules for the governing of practice, with the laudable idea of making uniform the administration of justice throughout the Union.

The state of New York had, for several reasons, been by way of dominating the practice of other states, perhaps because of the fact that its practice acts were more highly articulated at the time when so many states were considering whether or not to adopt codes. Material was thus afforded for the draftsmen of 'See Minutes, American Bar Association, 1916, p. 428 et seq.

other states to use in formulating their own codes, merely making differentiations to cover their own peculiar necessities, or assumed requirements. And so, at the time this committee was appointed, and after the failure of the Constitution to be adopted by the people at the election of 1915, the administration of justice in the state of New York was still dominated, controlled and regulated in about as elaborate a manner as it is possible to conceive. It had a Judiciary Article in its Constitution by no means comprehensive because it could not be deemed in and of itself to be all that related to the administration of justice set forth in the Constitution, but, on the other hand, not sufficiently generic, it contained details that ought never to be in a Constitution and restrictions and regulations that, in view of the natural rate of development and evolution in such a community as that of the Empire State, rendered the constitutional regulations inelastic and too rigid in points of detail that ought not to have been included, and subject, in respect to any amendment or change therein, to so much delay and so much machinery and so much missionary expenditure of time and effort to secure any particular change, that it had become a document not adapted to the judicial conditions in popular opinion and in the life of the community.

In the next place, it had a Code of Civil Procedure of no less than 3,384 sections. Many of these were not procedural but substantive; many were hybrid in these two respects, and many more were the subject of numerous amendments by the legislature from time to time. Some of these amendments were the result of painstaking and conscientious effort to improve some particular chapter or title of this code and make it more adaptable to present needs; others were of purely local or private nature, put through the legislature for the purpose of affecting some particular controversy in advance of the day of trial. Some were for the obvious purpose of merely meeting and obviating the effect of some judicial decision based upon the infelicity of particular phraseology. In addition to this, there were rules of practice. There were general rules; then rules made by the Court of Appeals; others by the appellate division of each judicial department; others for the governing of trial terms; others for the governing of special terms, that is, the parts for the trial of causes by a court without a jury, or for the disposition of litigated and unlitigated motions; others

were made by the City Court and others by the Surrogates' Courts. Special rules existed for the county courts and special rules for the municipal courts; with the result that it was not infrequently the case that a member of the bar of New York, admitted to practice. in all its courts, would upon being confronted with a case in a court of special or limited jurisdiction, be under the necessity of retaining as counsel, to guide him, one whose practice was more or less exclusively within that court.

The substantive law of the state, starting with the interesting fact that it was the common law except as modified by statute, had developed into a series of volumes of what were called "Consolidated Laws," nearly a dozen in number, and of over 10,000 pages, including amendments and supplements, and two volumes of unconsolidated laws, being a statutory list or record of special, private or local statutes of the state from 1778 to 1911 of about 3,200 pages; mere tabulations of these laws by chapter and year, with a brief statement of the subject and disposition thereof. That this was an intolerable condition everyone had come to realize and a Board of Statutory Consolidation had been created by chapter 713 of the laws of 1913, charged with the duty of simplifying the civil practice in the courts of the state. This board, making a report to the legislature in 1915, summarized the situation as follows:

When the state constitution was adopted, the people of the state accepted as a part of the law of the new commonwealth the common law procedure of England as the same had been modified by the legislature of the colony of New York, subject to such alterations and additions as the legislature of the new state might from time to time enact with reference thereto."

The dissatisfaction with the condition of the procedure in the courts as well as with the general substantive law was voiced in the provision of the constitution of 1846 which directed the legislature to appoint commissioners to reduce into a written and systematic code so much of the whole body of the law of the state as seemed practicable and expedient to them."

Pursuant to this provision of the constitution the Code of Procedure was adopted in 1848 which made substantial changes in the common law practice and regulated the bulk of the procedure by statutory rules.

The Field code, by which name the Code of Procedure of 1848 was commonly called, sought to regulate only the general features of the practice by statute leaving the courts to control the details by means of rules.

This system together with other statutes bearing upon the subject continued

Constitution 1777, Art. 35.

Constitution 1846, Art. 1, § 17.

to govern the procedure in the courts until the adoption of the first part of the Code of Civil Procedure in 1877 which with the supplemental chapters added in 1880 has regulated the practice in this state down to the present time.

The Throop code, by which name the Code of Civil Procedure has been known, was based upon the idea of bringing together within the covers of a single book all matters relating to procedure whether substantive or otherwise and regulating all of the details of practice by statutory enactments.

The criticisms that were made against the Code of Civil Procedure at the time of its adoption have been fully justified by experience; and ever since its enactment, speeches, addresses and reports have been hurled against it.

The agitation on the subject resulted in the passage of an act in 1895 providing for the appointment of commissioners to report "in what respects the civil procedure in the courts of this state can be revised, condensed and simplified."

The final report in pursuance of this statute was submitted to the legislature five years later but opposition arose to the plan followed by the commissioners and the report failed of adoption.

In 1899 a report of the Committee on Law Reform of the State Bar Association was made, in which the committee recommended "a simple practice act containing the more important provisions of the present code rearranged and revised, supplemented by rules of court."

A joint committee of the legislature in 1900 recommended a general plan, one of the features of which was "to reduce the general practice provisions to a single brief legislative practice act."

In 1903 a committee called the Committee of Fifteen made a report to the legislature pursuant to chapter 594 of the laws of 1902 in which it made various recommendations which would give as the report states: "A statute covering practice only, supplemented by such rules as may be deemed necessary to carry out fully its provisions."

In 1903 the Committee on the Law's Delay made its report with reference to the condition of procedure in the first department and made certain recommendations which however were not adopted.

BOARD OF STATUTORY CONSOLIDATION

At this time the Board of Statutory Consolidation was created by chapter 664 of the laws of 1904 by which it was authorized not only to consolidate the general statutes of the state but to revise the practice in the courts.

The board found the task of simplifying the practice too great a one in conjunction with the work of consolidating the statutes and therefore directed its attention to the latter.

In 1909 the board presented a consolidation of the general substantive statutes of the state which were adopted that year and later it prepared a statutory record of these statutes and also a statutory record of the special, private and local statutes.

The simplification of the practice, however, had not been overlooked by the 7 L. 1895, ch. 1036.

L. 1902, ch. 485, amended by L. 1903, ch. 634.

board and in 1906 there was prepared a reclassification of the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure under a logical analysis following the steps in the progress of an action.

In 1912 by chapter 393 the legislature directed the board to examine and report a plan for the classification, consolidation and simplification of the civil practice in the courts of this state and in the following year this report was presented to the legislature.

In 1913 the board was directed to prepare and present to the legislature "a practice act, rules of court and short forms" as recommended by the board in its report to the legislature of 1913.

In accordance with that statute we report to the legislature of 1915 statutes and rules designed to carry out the directions of the legislature and to simplify the practice in the courts of the state.

VII GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF REFORM

This report on simplification had been submitted to and discussed by the bar associations of the state of New York through able committees. It has been before the public at public hearings of the Joint Legislative Committee having this report under advisement for the legislature of the state. And it has been carefully examined by this committee with the primary result that a conviction has been formed in their minds that in the nature of things there are two theories of reform. One may be called the patchwork theory, and has high authority in support of it. It consists of emendations, "here a little, there a little, line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept," with the result that the modification or change that is sought is distributed over a period of time. The fact that drastic changes will result is concealed from a suspicious public, apprehensive that in some way their liberties or pockets will be unfavorably affected by any reform advocated by lawyers alone.

The other theory of reform is that urged by those who are conscious of the historic value of all developing institutions, but nevertheless have the courage, for it involves courage, to attack this particular problem of reform on the same theory on which the founders of this republic attacked the task of drafting a Constitution and of organizing the courts of the United States and, from time to time, of the several states of the Union. This method, postulates the ideal as its goal, the ideal in a constitutional Judiciary Article and the ideal in the distribution of powers of subsequent L. 1913, ch. 713,