The case of the government does not ap pear to have involved either one of these propositions, whatever may have been claimed in the arguments. The Anti-Trust Act prohibits only contracts, combinations, and conspiracies in restraint of commerce, and it does not purport to deal with the ownership of property in any respect. It is the act of contracting, combining, or con spiring in restraint of interstate commerce that is prohibited, and the relief sought by the government was not to regulate the ownership of property, but to restrain the continuance of a contract, combination, or conspiracy that operated in restraint of interstate commerce. While Congress was not vested by the Constitution with power to regulate the ownership of stock in State corporations, or the ownership of any other property, merely becausse used in interstate commerce, Congress was empowered to pro hibit obstructions and restraints of interstate commerce; and the power of Congress to prohibit persons from contracting, combin ing, or conspiring to obstruct or restrain interstate commerce would not fail merely because the contract, combination, or con spiracy was to be carried into effect through an acquisition of stock or other property.
IN the Yale Lam Journal for June, Charles G. Morris made a vigorous assault on "The Inefficient Statute." Such statutes he di vides into seven classes, under which he groups a surprisingly large number of unenforced or unenforceable Connecticut stat utes. He says in conclusion: If our Legislature after removing from the statutory list of crimes all injuries which are 'solely to the individual, should then provide adequate machinery for the apprehension of all whose misdeeds are a harm to the com munity as a whole, its session would per form a labor whose consummation would add more dignity to this State in the eyes of all the rest of the States of the Union, and represent a more notable achievement in genuine advancement of respect for law and
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order than has ever been accomplished since Magna Charta. In our great Republic, with a population oí the best and the worst elements from every race, our only hope for permanent institu tions is that fundamental respect for law, because it is law, which is native and inborn in the Anglo-Saxon, and which the children of our citizens from other lands learn, with out realizing it, in a generation or two, it they corne into contact with it in its best form. Every time a law is consciously vio lated because it is not enforced, a blow is struck which tells most severely on our foreign-born citizens, but nevertheless un dermines and weakens the best and most patriotic among us in direct proportion to our realization of what we are doing. ONE of the American judges in the Philip pines, W. F. Norris. contributes to the Yale Law Journal for June an account of an interesting Philippine criminal trial, and adds: The Philippine Criminal Code carefully points out to the trial judge what he shall consider an aggravating and what an ex tenuating circumstance. If a bully meet a frail consumptive on the street and without provocation knock him down, the law oblig ingly instructs the judge that the aggressor took advantage of his superior strength, and that in imposing the penalty he must give consideration to this circumstance, and pro vides a scale of penalties to be fitted to the peculiar conditions of the transaction. The judge is presumed incapable of a fair con sideration and comparison of all the evi dence in the case. To supply the deficiency in the judicial intellect, a mechanical list of penalties are appended to the code, consti tuting a sort of Chinese puzzle, from which the court and attorneys figure out the fitting penaltv at the close of the trial of a criminal case. This Spanish-American-Filipino code is a constant irritation to the judge or practi tioner from the United States. Yhat any person of sufficient intelligence to keep out
