homogeneous to the heterogeneous tends steadily and inexorably in
the United States to lessen the value of judicial reports out of
the State in which the cases were decided. Each of forty-five
different commonwealths is building upon legal foundations that
are not dissimilar, but some of them are advancing far faster
than others, and none proceed at exactly the same rate or on
exactly the same lines. They are building by statute, by popular
usage and by judicial decision. Heterogeneity is most marked in
legislation and it tells most there. Whoever looks over a volume
of reports will find a large proportion of the cases turning upon
some local statute. An important index title is that of
"Statutes Cited and Expounded." In Vol. 138, for instance, of
the Massachusetts Reports (a volume selected at random for this
purpose), 223 statutes or sections of statutes are noted as
having been made the subject of remark in the 170 cases which it
contains. Almost all are Massachusetts statutes, a very small
proportion of which have been re-enacted elsewhere.

Appellate courts thus forced at every turn to study with care
into the effect of local legislation, much of which, to get at
its meaning, must be traced back historically through various
changes during a long course of years, and in the older States
sometimes for centuries, listen unwillingly to citations from
decisions of other States which are even remotely affected by the
statutes that may be there in force.

The newer States and those with a small population are naturally
the ones that rely most on foreign authority. In the last volume
(Vol. 26) of the Nevada Reports, sixty-two per cent, of the cases
cited in the opinions of the court are of that kind. In the last