Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/139

REVIEWS. 123 Cases on Constitutional Law. With Notes. By James Bradley Thayer, LL.D., Weld Professor of Law at Harvard University. Cambridge: Charles W. Sever. 1894. 8vo. Part L, pp. xi., 1-448. Part IL, pp. ix., 449-944. Illustrative Criminal Cases. By Joseph Henry Beale, Assistant Pro- fessor of Law in Harvard University. Cambridge : The Harvard Law Review Publishing Association. 1894. Octavo, pp. 197. These two widely different books are, when taken together, strong evi- dence of the catholic nature of the case system, — evidence that it is not a trick of times and men, but a method capable of almost as many differ- ent uses as there are ways of good teaching. Professor Beale's book may be dismissed with this word, being only a selection of eighty or so of the more important criminal cases, designed to be a case-book for those stu- dents who have little time to give to the study of this subject, and well suited to put the necessary principles before them. Professor Thayer's are perhaps the most elaborate of all the case-books. Here, not content with the selection and condensation of the cases, he has taken case, treatise, and tract, and welded them together into a book which, with all the advantages of the case system, is yet almost like a text- book in its continuity and fulness. This is especially true of Part L, which is designed to be complete in itself as an answer to the question, What is a Constitution ? so that besides the American discussions of rigid, skeleton-like instruments, it contains material collected from every source apt to illustrate the study of systems of fundamental law. It seems more than likely that this Part will be used outside of law schools in the more academic study of Constitutional Law, such, for instance, as goes on college courses in United States History. Part II. contains Chapter IV. on the later amendments and fundamental civil rights, and Chapter V. on "Unclassified Legislative Power, — -the so- called Police Power." Part HI. is announced to appear in the early, and Part IV. in the late autumn. Next after the brevity which has been secured in a subject usually so diffusely treated, the noteworthy thing in the selections is the fact that they are thoroughly readable ; the cases are not considerations of the technical doctrines of law, but treatises on politics in the old and best sense of the word, and they are interesting to any one who wants to know about govern- ment, as well as to those who look at its legal side. r. w. h. Juridical Equity Abridged, for the Use of Students. By Charles E. Phelps, Professor of Juridical Equity in the University of Maryland, and Associate Judge of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore. Baltimore : M. Curlander, 1894. 8vo. pp. xxxii., 373. One cannot but be prepossessed in favor of this book by the modest disclaimer of the preface, where the author says : " It does not profess to be an exhaustive treatise. It does not offer to compete with any existing work. It may be called a horn-book, nothing more." As an introduction to the fuller treatises of Adams, Pomeroy, or Story, the work in question has marked merits ; and this is especially true of Part II., on Equity Jurisprudence. Much of it is written with a due sense of proportion, — all topics not being treated as of equal importance. It is uncon- ventional. The author speaks in his own words, and with no uncertain