Page 5 - Delaware Lawyer -Spring 2021

EDITOR’S NOTE
The Common Law is a legal system where memory matters. A state or nation’s collective memory of how a legal principle has been applied in the past instructs the community, its legal advisers, and its judges on how conflicts are to be avoided or resolved. Compiling, orga- nizing and analyzing that memory is the daily challenge of a lawyer, even one who never enters a courtroom.
Unlike civil law, where decisions are inevitably predicated on a statute, regu- lation or constitution, the Common Law often interpolates among written guideposts. Adherence to statute is al- ways good, but not always possible. As Judge Rich Gebelein relates in this issue’s final article, when he proposed a sched- uling conference before a complex case, Bosnian lawyers were flummoxed — “Our court rules don’t have them” —
before their Delaware visitor showed that the law can adapt beyond the instruction manual.
The legal memory that underlies the Common Law must be gathered — in case books, treatises, the scorned but essential encyclopedias, and compila- tions (decennial digests or A.L.R.) of cases that resolved similar facts, some- times in contrary ways. Someone has to select relevant material, systematically arrange, painstakingly edit, then index it so the case on point can be discovered the day before, or even an hour before, the hearing.
The gathering of this information, and its presentation to those who study the law, is the subject of this issue. Battle Robinson, a Tar Heel by way of Yale who served this State ably as counsel to Gov. du Pont and Family Court judge, illustrates how a two-century-old Sussex
County collection shows the develop- ment of legal reporting and case analy- sis in the Republic’s early years. Galen Wilson, the Delaware courts’ senior law librarian, shows how technologi- cal change and the public’s heightened desireforaccesstoauthoritativelegalin- formation have sharpened the demands on the court house library. Lori Strickler Corso, who teaches legal writing and other skills at Villanova Law School, foreshadows changes in research and technology over the next generation.
As ever, the challenge facing the law librarian, scholar, judge and prac- titioner is to maintain integrity in the memory that informs the Common Law and its continuing development.
Chuck Durante
Chuck Durante
SPRING 2021 DELAWARE LAWYER 3