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NEW LAW BOOKS.
It is the intention of The Green Bag to have its book reviews written by competent reviewers. The usual custom of magasines is to confine book notices to books sent in for review. At the request of subscribers, however, The Green Bag will be glad to review or notice any recently published law book whether received for review or not.
A TREATISE ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITA TIONS. By Tlwmas M. Coolcy. Seventh edition edited by Victor H. Lane. Boston: Little Brown, and Company. (1903.) (cxiii + 1036 pp.) The first edition of Judge Cooler's mas terpiece was published in 1868, and the work has gone through no less than seven editions in the comparatively short period of thirty-five years. Many a good book lives but a day and is buried long before its au thor. If a treatise survives the writer and justifies a new edition, without a change of text, the book must have had substantial merits. All this and more can be said of Judge Cooley's Treatise on Constitutional Lim itations. It fell from the press a legal clas sic and in the lifetime of the author the book was given over to posterity. Famous and authoritative at home, the treatise was cited with approval on the continent, and the present reviewer has often heard Ger man writers or teachers of constitutional law speak of the work with unstinted praise. Thirteen years have elapsed between the appearance of the sixth and seventh editions of the Treatise, and in these years the courts. by a multitude of decisions, have attempted to bring into clearer light, and state with greater precision, the somewhat invisible line between Federal and State sovereignty and jurisdiction. In order that text and notes should state the law of the present day, the decisions of the courts should be placed before the intelligent reader by the text. Hence, the present edition. It was singularly appropriate that the labor of revision and annotation should be confided to a professor of the Michigan Law School, and Professor Victor H. Lane
has admirably performed his editorial du ties. The text is untouched; the original footnotes have been retained but added to by the editor, who prevents confusion by inclosing his various additions in brackets. In many cases the editor has made original notes to the text. These are, likewise, in closed in brackets, and are printed across the page in a single column. As the origi nal and added notes are in double columns, these wholly original references to and in terpretations of the text may be seen at a glance. In speaking of the new matter and the se lection of cases, Mr. Lane modestly says, in the preface: "The particular experience. or better judgment of some, will suggest a different selection in some cases, but it is hoped that what has been don" will meet reasonably well the common need." A care ful examination of selected passages from Mr. Lane's additions leads the reviewer to state that the editorial work is far in excess of Mr. Lane's modest hopes, for the cita tions of authority are not only accurate, but apt, and the views expressed are as clear in style as they are sound in law. An idea of the extent of the editor's con tributions will be gained by a mere compari son between the sixth and the present edi tion, which contains slightly more than a hundred and fifty pages of additional mat ter. In a word, the work of Judge Cooley has not suffered at Mr. Lane's hands. Higher praise than this cannot well be given to an editor. AMERICAN DIPLOMACY IN THE ORIENT. By John W. Foster. Boston. Houghton, Mifflin, and Company. 1903. (xiv+498 pp.) After a lifetime devoted to public affairs and to the cares of an exacting profession. General Foster takes up the pen and handles it as dexterously and gracefully as ever a young man wielded a sword. Indiana men, it would seem, take kindly to literature after winning distinction in other fields. The names of General Lew Wallace and Mau rice Thompson will occur to the reader. The younger generation seems inclined to re
