The Dominion MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1943. A COMMON HERITAGE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 7, 4 October 1943, Page 4

The Dominion MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1943. A COMMON HERITAGE

It is of distinct interest, at a time when their armed strength is being used for a common purpose, and the co-operation of the various units is such that they merge into one great force, that other aspects of -Anglo-American unity should be studied. Sir Harry Batteibee indicated one of vital importance when, addressing the annual conference of the Justices’ Association last week, he referred to the joint heritage of the British and American peoples in their system ol law There may be differences in the machinery used, but the basis of the laAv itself in both countries traces back to the same origins. The men who founded the American settlements took with them a knowledge of common larv because for centuries English law has had not only an extremely continuous but a matchlessly well-attested history.” One authority says that there is, in English legal history, “a singular continuity from Alfred’s day to our oavii. The Common Law *to which Sir Harry referred, as something binding together not only British countries but also English-speaking peoples everywhere, was the term given to distinguish the general law of the land from local customs, royal prerogatives and all that was exceptional or special. There has long been among these peoples a willing admission of the supremacy of law, and on the security and stability thus provided, thinkers such as the late Marquess of Lothian and Mr. Lionel Curtis have seen the possibility of creating a system of international co-operation that would make law, and not force, the arbiter in international disputes. The influences exerted by this common heritage can be seen in many phases of national life. American historians, like the British trace their basic constitutional factors to the same sources. In one o his works on the American system Mr. Woodrow Wilson said: Uurs is scarcely less than the British, a living and fecund system. It does not indeed, find its rootage so widely in the hidden soil of unwritten law - its tap-root at least is the Constitution, but the Constitution is now, like’Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, only the sap-centre of a system of Government vastly larger than the stock from which it has branched.” But both the written Constitution of the United States and the unwritten one of Great Britain-described as partly law and partly history, and partly ethics and partly custom —have the same baSl There are grounds for hoping, as Sir Harry Batterbee said, that in this common heritage will be found something of exceptional value in the years that lie ahead. There should be, if not an identify,, at least a marked similarity of outlook on the great problems that wi demand solution. Both peoples are fighting today for the supremacy of law over armed might, and are coining to realize that in law, supported by strength, lies the hope of established peace. They want to textend in some way, to the.sphere of international affairs that condition which has made the use of force within, their own boundaries, or between themselves, inconceivable.