Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/371

REVIEWS. REVIEWS. 355 Selections on Contracts. By William A. Keener, Professor of Law and Dean of the Faculty of Law in Columbia College. Two vols., pp. 1222. Baker, Voorhis, & Co., New York. Price, $12. This book is intended primarily for the use of first-year students in the Columbia Law School. It consists of a collection of well-known English and American cases, taken from Finch's " Cases on Contracts," with very liberal slices from Mr. Leake's treatise on Contracts sand- wiched in between. The editor thus brings together in one book the text of a standard treatise and the cases on which the text is founded. This plan is adopted in aid of the method of instruction now used at Columbia. Whether this method will enable the student to acquire an equal knowledge of the law with the expenditure of a smaller amount of time and energy, or will prevent him from acquiring the independent habit of thought and firm grasp of principles which comes from grap- pling single-handed with the difficulties which beset the beginner in the study of cases, can be learned only from experience. In the opinion of those who have been trained under the case system pure and simple, one of its chief merits is that it gives the student a power to extract • with confidence the ratio decidendi of any case, and to compare it intelligently with other cases on the same subject ; to ascertain for him- self the principles on which it was decided, and see the considerations which influenced the court in reaching its decision. Whether the Columbia method is so well adapted to this end as is the Harvaid method remains to be seen. It may well be that a difference in the existing circumstances of the two schools may render a slightly different system desirable. It is not, however, our purpose to discuss the Colum- bia method, except in so far as it is involved in the plan of this book. The reprint in this form of a leading text-book would seem to be no great gain to the educational literature of the law. The exigencies of the Columbia method may, however, require it. One obvious dis- advantage of the plan is that it requires the books to be of an incon- venient size. In appearance and make-up it is inferior to Professor Keener's collection of cases on Quasi-contracts. The selections are not confined to the essential elements of the simple contract merely, but cover nearly the whole field dealt with by the ordinary text-books. The American Digest: Annual, 1891 : Also the Complete Digest for 1 89 1. Prepared and edited by the editorial staff of the National Reporter System. St. Paul, Minn. : West Publishing Company, 1 89 1. Pages 5103. The digest is modelled on the same plan as that adopted last year. It is somewhat larger, covering the twelve months from September 1, 1890, to August 31, 1 89 1. In form it presents no new features. The completeness of this D gest is its greatest merit, and its success during the past year proves the wisdom of consolidating and bringing all the cases into one volume. Lawyers' Reports, Annotated. Book XII. Robert Desty, editor. The Lawyers' Cooperative Publishing Company, Rochester, N. Y., 1891. Pages 911.