However, Black wrote that the canon "no longer has any foundation in reason". Theodore Sedgwick said of common law: "It is difficult, if not impossible now to understand this enthusiastic loyalty to a body of law, the most peculiar features of which the activity of the present generation have been largely occupied in uprooting and destroying." Sedgwick too called the derogation canon "absurd".

In 1907 Roscoe Pound, in an article called "Spurious