The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-03-22
THE CODE COMMISSION.

The senate yesterday knocked out
Mr.. Stevens absurd amendment to the
code commission providing that at
least one of whom shall be learned in
the law" The senate should have in
serted the words, AL of whom shall be
learned in the law But doubtless it
concluded that common sense would
dictate that course.
By the way, we thought the climax
of absurdity had been reached when
Mr.. Stevens proposed and the house
accepted his amendment to this bill;
but We were mistaken. Mr.. Stevens
advanced well along the line of alb
surdity, but did not arrive at its ut
most limit, the Deseret News passed
him by several points by attempting
a defense of his absurd amendment.
And such defense, Mr.. Stevens,
however grateful he may feel to the
News for the manifestation of chival-
rous spirit in coming to his rescue,
would have done better without its
defense-indeed, we are of opinion he
would have made a better defense
himself. For instance, the News re
fuses to admit, even for the sake of
argument, that in a work concerning
and of the law, only men learned in
its precepts and experienced in its ap-
plication should he employedr'
Would the News admit that in a
delicate surgical operation-''in a work
concerning and Of surgery only men
learned in that science and experienced
in the application of its principles
should be employed?" Or would it con-
tend that a wheel-wright and black
smith should be among the men en-
ployed in such work in order to sim
plify the operation?
We are told, however, that our con-
tention that this code commission
should be composed of men, all of
whom are learned in the law. drawn
out to its fullest limit would exclude
all but lawyers from the halls of leg
islation, from gubernatorial chairs and
from all places wherein an understand
ing and application of the law are re-
quired."
No such stuff. The cases. are not
parallel at all. Legislatures and gov
ernors of states deal with general con-
ditions of the country, and enact laws
to meet those conditions and the
greater the variety of men in a legis-
lature as to occupation, education, ex-
perience and information. the better
is likely to be the legislative work
they do.
But the work of codifying, revising
and annotating the law is quite an
other thing. Here the only considera-
ton Is what is the law, what law is
in force, what has been amended, what
abolished? How shall it be classified
and subjects correlated? How and to
what extent shall it be annotated?
For such a work, concerning only the
law, every man that touches it should
be not only learned in the law, but
deeply learned in it, and a man of wide
experience therein.
One might just as well say that it
is not necessary to have our judges
who deal with matters concerning
and of the law learned in the
law, that they need not be men all
of whom are learned in the law But
common sense as we'll as constitutional
provision demands that they shall be-
all of them, learned in the law.
As to men having a knowledge Of
composition and syntax being useful
on the commission, and of the work
of copying, indexing, ETC., we would
say that the bill creating the com
mission provides clerks to do that kind
of work in addition to the commission
r,roner