Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/402

This page needs to be proofread.
Editorial Department.

«xpert witness into disrepute. So long as the present method of selecting and paying ex perts continues, but little change for the bet ter can probably be expected. The change will undoubtedly come when the expert is ap pointed and paid as an officer of the court and is by law made a part of the judicial ma chinery of the State. ON the question of "Keeping Photograph and Measurements of Accused after His Acquittal, Case and Comment for April says editorially : The denial by the courts of the applica tion of Molineux for a mandamus to compel the removal of his photograph and measure ments from the records of the superintend ent of State prisons has attracted wide atten tion and much adverse comment from the press. The decision by the court of appeals of New York to this effect is, however, fully justified by the opinion of Judge Vann. . . . The injustice of perpetrating the photo graph and Bertillon measures of an inno cent man after his innocence has been ad judged may be strongly urged, but it is clearly a matter for the Legislature to say whether or not public policy requires such records, once made, to be preserved. The perpetuation of a judicial record of the trial of an innocent man may, as the court well points out, be very unpleasant to him, but such records are always preserved. It is not likely to be argued that such records ought to be expunged. The record itself, though it may be humiliating to the person .who has been accused, is, nevertheless, his shield against a repetition of the same accusation after his acquittal. But the retention of his photograph and measurements among those kept for convicts seems to be an unnecessary humiliation, which the public does not re quire him to endure. It is unquestionably a matter for the Legislature to determine, and no good reason appears why the Legislature should not provide for the removal of the portrait and physical measurements of one who has been adjudged innocent from the portraits and records of convicts.

355

IN the Columbia Law Review for April Pro fessor Francis M. Burdick follows up in an article entitled "Codification of the Doc trine of Revision, the discussion which for several months has been raging—in scholarly and friendly fashion—between Professor Williston, of Harvard, and himself over the question of "Revision for Breach of War ranty." Professor Burdick maintains "that only Iowa and Maine can be counted as unequivo cally committed to the Massachusetts rule; and that but three other States show, at the present time, any decided inclination in favor of that rule, and asserts that because all of the Federal Courts, as well as those of nineteen State and Territorial jurisdictions, have unhesitatingly adopted the English rule, and several others have indicated, in dicta, their approval of that rule, a very pow erful argument is afforded for incorporating it rather than the Massachusetts rule in an American Code of the Law of Sales." I submit (he says), that the prevailing rule should be incorporated into the proposed Code of the Law of Sales in this country: First, because it is the prevailing rule, and came to prevail for the reasons and in the way above described: second, because, it is the rule of the English Code, and uniformity on this important topic in commercial law is most desirable; third, because it accords with the general principles of the law of con tracts; fourth, it holds parties to contracts which they have honestly and deliberately made; and, fifth, because it treats both parties with perfect fairness and works no injustice to either. AN important contribution on a pressing question of governmental control of cor porations is the draft filling some ninety pages of "A Proposed National Incorpora tion Law,'1 by Professor Horace L. Wilgus, in the Michigan Law Review for April. The rational point of view of Professor Wilgus is indicated by the following extracts from his short foreword to the act itself: It is not the duty of the government to act as a parent of its people; neither is it