Not a little, however, of the development of our unwritten law has been and remains of a local character. This is particularly true of that of the Pacific States, both on account of climatic conditions and historical antecedents.[Footnote: Katz _v._ Walkinshaw, 141 California Reports, 116.] Chief Justice Field of the Supreme Court of California, afterward so long a member of the Supreme Court of the United States, did both a constructive and a destructive work in shaping the jurisprudence of that State. He found it seated in a land on which certain institutions of civil law origin had been impressed for centuries and into which other institutions of common law origin had been introduced in recent years. His judicial opinions molded these into one mass, rejecting something from each and retaining something from each.[Footnote: Pomeroy, "Some Account of the Work of Stephen J. Field," 38, 45.] Some of the results of his creative touch have been the foundation of decisions in distant States, but most were so dependent on local circumstances and conditions as to be incapable of transplantation. But as to all questions of general concern which can be answered from analogies drawn from the common law, the judges of each State--and it is the State judiciary on which the burden of developing unwritten law mainly rests--now find in the reported decisions of the courts of last resort in all the other States a fertile source of supply when they are looking for a rule to fit a case for which the ancient law made no direct provision. Keen intellects from the bench, aided perhaps by keener ones from the bar in forty-five different jurisdictions, are discussing the problems of the day as they appear mirrored in litigated causes. What is a new question in one State was set at rest ten years or ten days ago by a judicial decision in another. If the decision was a just and logical deduction from accepted principles of the older law it will probably be followed everywhere. If unjust and illogical, its very faults will serve to guard other courts to better conclusions. How far judges advance along these paths depends greatly on the character of the bar. A judge rarely initiates anything. He is apt to fall into a mistake if he does. The business which he has to do is brought before him by others. It is brought before him in the best way to throw all possible light upon it, because it is set before him from two opposite points of view by two antagonists, each strenuously endeavoring to detect a flaw in the reasoning of the other. These two men have previously given the subject in controversy much careful thought. What views neither presents are generally not worth presenting. As was said in the preceding chapter, it is only in the plainest case that a judge can properly or safely base his decision on a position not suggested at the bar or as to the soundness of which he has not asked the opinion of the counsel at the hearing.