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PREFACE .
IN 1887, when the first volume of the American and English Encyclopædia
of Law was published, a signal stage in the history of lawbook making was entered upon. The enormous and rapidly growing mass of adjudicated cases to be found in the reports required that new methods of stating and finding the law be devised. The Law Encyclopædia has proved so useful, so time and labor saving, and so essential to the practitioner's equipment, that no apologies are required in presenting this work to the profession.

This work is not a new or revised edition of any other publication. The design is to present anew the entire body of the law, substantive and adjective, as declared by the decisions of the courts, under titles alphabetically arranged. In many respects the plan corresponds to that of the American and English Encyclopædia of Law, Second Edition, and the Encyclopædia of Pleading and Practice, and use has been made of the text of those works so far as adapted to the present enterprise. This use especially applies to those statements of law in the earlier Encyclopædias which have been cited or quoted with approval by the courts. These citations and quotations aggregate nearly forty thousand, and the enrichment of this work with such a host of judicially approved texts should add materially to its usefulness and authority. The exploration by the Encyclopædia of Pleading and Practice of the vast field of procedure, which had been so long neglected, has made it practicable here to treat, with a fullness not before possible, pleading and practice in connection with the substantive law of the various topics . The accumulation of reported cases,
since the articles for the earlier Encyclopædias were written, has made
it necessary to go over all the ground afresh, the new decisions on many topics often being more numerous than those in existence thirteen or fourteen years ago.

PREFACE .
There has been no rigid adherence to the scheme of titles found in any former work. While most of the standard titles of the law as well as most of those used in the earlier Encyclopædias will here be found, it has seemed desirable and indeed necessary to provide numerous titles not before used, in order that rounded treatment might be given of subjects about which distinctive bodies of authorities have accumulated. In this work, as heretofore, the effort has been to aim at practical convenience of consultation rather than to strain for what might be considered a scientific classification . The cross-references, inserted wherever guidance should be given to another part of the work, are so numerous, and the scope notes at the beginning of articles so specific, that difference of view as to classification should cause little or no confusion .

The work is founded upon the cases in the reports . All articles have been written with library facilities which have made possible complete collections of American, English, and Canadian cases , and the editors have taken special pains to see that writers exhausted those pertaining to their topics . It is hoped that at least a reasonable degree of perfection has been achieved in this regard . It is obvious that in a work of this kind but little account can be taken of the constantly changing statutes of the various jurisdictions which have not been before the courts for interpretation.
The collection of judicially defined words and phrases and of maxims has been made by a page to page search through all the reports . The results, as will be observed, are really striking in the wealth of material for this useful and important feature which has been brought to light. In connection with matters of procedure references have been made to cases which contain adjudicated forms and precedents. Throughout the work, in citing cases, parallel references are given to both official and unofficial reports . The general typographical plan of a text usually brief, full notes, a synopsis preceding each article, abundance of black- letter catchlines to expedite the work of the investigator, cases arranged by jurisdictions , is so well known and its utility so generally recognized, that comment upon these
features would be superfluous . Each volume will be separately indexed, and when finished a minute and comprehensive index of the entire work will be prepared .

The literary, editorial, and mechanical labor involved in compiling
and publishing the most voluminous text work ever offered to the legal profession necessitates that several years elapse between the issuance of the first and of the last volumes. This is regrettable but unavoidable . In order that, during the course of its publication, the work may be constantly abreast of the courts and the profession have the benefit of the latest utterances of the judges on subjects covered by published articles, an annual supplement will be issued. This supplement will be cumulative from year to year. It will gather under titles which have appeared the decisions which have been reported since the writers closed their work. The staff having charge of the preparation of this supplement will keep it constantly up with the reports, and subscribers may at any time obtain references to cases decided since the last supplement was issued, by writing to the publishers.

The contributors to this work are, as a rule, lawyers who have made law writing a career. Long experience has demonstrated that the best work in legal compilation is done by those who have been trained in the arduous task of delving into the thousands of volumes of reports containing the material for legal treatises of the kind which it is the purpose of this work to provide. The average practitioner has but a faint idea of the amount of skill and labor required to gather from so many sources the particular rulings of the courts and to construct from them a treatise that will show the exact state of the law with principles and applications analyzed and stated with
the precision and completeness which the profession to-day expect. Yet no article in this Encyclopædia can be said to be the work of a particular individual, and accordingly no articles are signed . All have been revised to a greater or less degree by those especially engaged for such work and finally by the editors . In addition , a distinguished body of judges , legal educators, and practitioners have consented to act as a board of consulting editors . To the members of this board have been referred from time to time questions on which writers and editors have needed the advice or opinion of lawyers of large experience on the bench, in practice , or in educating. Although they are not to be held responsible for the details of an undertaking which it has been impossible for them to supervise, yet much of such merit as the work possesses is undoubtedly due to their assistance and
direction . The Introduction by Professor Thomas A. Street, of the Law Department of the University of Missouri , and a member of this board, will command attention.

With a keen appreciation of the formidable character of their
undertaking, the editors submit the work in the hope that it may meet
the requirements of a profession which, in the high pressure of the
times, demands more and more of those who make its books ,
WILLIAM M. MCKINNEY.
DAVID S. GARLAND