Rationale for the Scheme
Rationale
Moys gave her reasons for developing the scheme as she did in the introduction to the first edition of the Moys Classification Scheme, and outlined why conventional arrangement in libraries is inadequate for the classification of law materials. Most classification schemes arrange materials by subject or discipline, and sub-arrange them by subordinate topics within the main subject. In contrast, most users of law libraries search for law materials primarily by jurisdiction and secondarily by subject; only sometimes do they approach the subject from the point of view of comparative law, moreover, most books on the subject of law are written from the point of view of a particular system, for example Canadian law or English law.(17)
Moys
realized that one requirement for countries with a common law
background, is
that common law materials be shelved together. Tradition
in common law countries dictates that precedent
may be taken
from courts in other jurisdictions, including other countries. Moys explained
further in her introduction to the scheme: “Naturally, the legal
systems of
countries which share historical links tend to have common
features.”(18) Many countries
around the world have legal
systems influenced by common law, descending from the common law of
England, or
civil law, descending from the law of the late Roman Empire, including
many
African and Asian countries.(19)
Common law
systems are more homogeneous than civil law systems; however as there
is such a
range of countries that have been influenced by common law, inevitably
there is
a range in practices and consequent difficulties in classification.(20) Not all
countries exposed to common law
accepted it absolutely; many countries adopted parts of common law and
retained
parts of traditional law systems, and some predominantly common law
countries have regions where civil law traditions have been
retained, such
as
Québec, Louisiana, Scotland, the Isle of Man and the Channel
Islands.(21)
This
variety of possible systems makes it difficult to clarify which
jurisdiction should be considered common law for the purposes of
classification. For countries that use a
combination of common law and indigenous systems all books on common
law
could be put together, while the books on other systems could be
classed by jurisdiction, but the legal materials from countries
with hybrid systems
would be
divided: between the components of their systems that use common law
and those
that do not. It is also probable that
the legal systems of many countries in Africa and Asia with mixed
systems will
continue to diverge from the common law tradition along national
lines,(22)
so classifying them together with countries that use primarily common
law will
make less and less sense in the future. Another
possibility is to classify countries like Canada,
the United
States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and the West Indies,
that
use common law almost exclusively, together, and countries with mixed
systems
separately, but
some important common law sources would be separated from the common
law materials, for example
Indian
criminal and company law; however, this fault could be
ameliorated
Moys
decided to classify the countries that predominantly use common law
together and
provide the option for special treatment of a preferred country, which
allows
libraries in countries with hybrid systems to classify their own
materials in a
way best suited to local conditions.(24) She followed the general practice in
classification of putting general materials, such as legal philosophy
before
specialized materials, including national legal systems.
The first division in the classification
scheme is legal system by regional arrangement sorted alphabetically.(25) Within
legal systems, primary legal
materials, such as statutes, cases, consolidations and debates are
arranged
chronologically.(26)
Secondary materials, which include
dictionaries, histories, bibliographies, commentaries, monographs, case
books
and journals, are arranged by subject.(27) One exception is journals, which in some ways
are like primary sources; Moys gave two options, either to place them
after the
primary sources by country of publication or to arrange them in one
alphabetical sequence by title for ease of location: a decision that is
left up
to the library.(28)
Moys was careful to provide room in the scheme for future developments and to make it adaptable enough to be used in different kinds of libraries, including libraries of courts, legal societies, law schools and the legal sections of general libraries. These options include optional numbers for non-legal subjects, an optional class for the law of a preferred country, a method of simplification for small collections, and numbers left unused throughout the scheme in preparation for future developments.(29) In this way Moys created a scheme that is flexible and useful for the classification of law in many different contexts and that has been successful at accommodating local needs in many different countries.