ABSTRACT
Frederick the Great tried it. He intended that in the code prepared under his directions "all contingencies should be provided for with such careful minuteness that no possible doubt could arise at any future time. The judges were not to have any discretion as regards interpretation, but were to consult a royal commission as to any doubtful points, and to be absolutely bound by their answer."1 And the decisions of the courts in applying the code were to have no weight whatsoever as precedents. The plan failed. The code did not automatically solve all legal problems. The royal commission was obliged to issue many volumes of supplementary rules, and the courts were unable to obey the injunction that in deciding cases they should not be influenced by the decisions of their predecessors. Finally, it was formally recognized that the code could not successfully stereotype the law so as to make it, at one stroke, available for all possible combinations of circumstances; the royal commission was dissolved, and the judges were explicitly given the right to "interpret" the law "so as to give effect to changes in the general condition of things."
