Statutes
| Date | 01 July 1941 |
| Published date | 01 July 1941 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1941.tb00880.x |
54
MODERN LAW REVIEW July,
1941
STATUTES
The
War
Damage
Act,
1941
The city arose as
a
specially protected environment within whose safe
confines culture, industry, and civilization could develop.
It
is
a
parti-
cularly ironic turn of history that this environment should have become
the one most vulnerable to the disintegrating effects of modem warfare.
The bomber has created the unprecedented necessity for the entire system
of civic relations to continue its daily functions amid the continual destruc-
tion and threat of destruction of
its
materials, lives and property.
Insofar as law adjusts and controls these relations
it
is
goaded into
activity.
It
was inevitable that stacks of statutes and reams of regulations
should accompany each new manifestation of destruction. Perhaps
it
was
equally inevitable that this new law should be most inadequate where
the need was most urgent. Law, which founds itself on precedent, and,
more than any other science, inhibits
its
ability to meet new situations
by the strictness with which
it
limits itself to the employment of existing
historically defined sources and concepts, must always
miss
the point of
revolutionary situations, even where
it
is
profuse to the point of exhaustion
in dealing with them. There is the constant danger that
a
new problem
will not be met, but
be
given only the specious appearance of solution, by
surrounding
it
with traditional and comforting words. The existing legis-
lative scheme to meet the emergency
so
urgently raised by war damage,
both to life and property, has done little more than hide the scars with
a
bandage. Crucial social problems have been subjected to administrative
first-aid treatment, and laws, which, in their reliance on the major premises
of juridical ‘normalcy
’
are nothing less than irrelevant in the circumstances.
The most recent and the largest addition to this scheme, the War
Damage Act,
1941,
only confirms
it
in this aspect.
It
is not possible here
to consider even a fraction of the vast number of legal problems that will
arise from this Act, many of which will only precipitate themselves clearly
in its practical administration in succeeding years.
Its
relations to existing
war damage law
is
a
problem of more immediate practical urgency, and
a codification of the measures in this series, made now, would play
a
creative
part by dissolving the inconsistencies inevitable to an interrelated group
of
ad
hoc
emergency measures. From this point of view, indeed, the Act is
something of an achievement. Conceived out of necessity and born in
haste, its
IOZ
sections and five schedules are, with few exceptions,’ well
drafted, and free from inner inconsistencies. This
is
particularly commend-
able in view of the lack of general discussion that would normally precede
and accompany
a
bill of comparable importance in peace time (though
the pressure groups were active, and the authentic peace-time flavour was
imparted by the advertisers and bill-posting associations getting their way
(9.
19)
while local authorities had many reasonable demands refused).
The gap was partially filled by the sustained and informed criticism
of
a
representative body of members throughout the passage of the bill
1
S.
25
(8)
(d)
is not clear until it is realised
that
it
operates by way of addition
to a definition, not as a definition.
S.
37
(I)
and the Third and Fourth Schedules
are not models
of
lucidity.
A
more serious blemish is
the
way in which definitions
are scattered broadcast throughout
the
Act, and
those
which
are collected,
placed at the end,
so
that its first perusal is a painful affair of inter-depending
suspended judgments. An earlier practice of putting all definitions at
the
front
of the measure had much to commend it.
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