EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT over them the power of life and death. But they and their descendants were always to remain outside the pale of Turkish rule and the application of Turkish law, except in cer tain specific cases provided for in the Capitu lations. That these various colonies have continued in existence for three centuries, and some of them for four and a half, shows that the system has been practicable, and no West ern lawyer acquainted with the circumstances of Turkey and of the foreign colonists residing there, would seriously think of attempting to abolish the actually existing regime of the Capitulations." INTERNATIONAL LAW (see Constitutional Law, Treaties). JURISPRUDENCE. " Abolition of the Jury System," by George H. Williams, Law Notes (V. ix, p. 150). JURISPRUDENCE. " The Development of Roman Marriage," by A. H. J. Greenidge, Law Quarterly Review (V. xxi, p. 357). JURISPRUDENCE. " A Constitutional His tory of Hungary," by Paul Vinogradoff, Law Quarterly Review (V. xxi, p. 426). JURISPRUDENCE (Contracts). " Consid eration v. Causa in Roman-American Law," by Joseph H. Drake in the November Michi gan Law Review (V. iv, p. 19) considers the probable effect of the civil law doctrine of causa in contracts when brought in competi tion with the common law doctrine of consider ation, and quotes from the analogies of the South African and Louisiana experience to prove that ultimately these courts will cease to enforce in practice any gratuitous promises except donations. JURISPRUDENCE (Criminal Law). The November Yale Law Journal (V. xv, p. i) publishes Secretary Taft's address on the "Administration of the Criminal Law," much commented on in the papers last summer. He reminds us that we are prone to be nar row in our prejudice in favor of the common law and says: "But certainly when in actual practice the
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common law lawyer is brought to the study of the beautifully simple and exactly compre hensive language of the civil code governing the rights between individuals, he begins to feel the veneration that comes from consciously viewing the work of twenty centuries of jurists and law-givers who have been struggling dur ing all that period to simplify and make lucid the rules of law and to reduce it to the science that under the civil code it certainly has be come." The common law stands for the utmost lib erty of the individual, and as a price of its liberty it imposes upon the person enjoying it the burden of looking out for himself. The means it developed for the protection of the individual were essentially practical and through the procedure of the law. He re minds us that " we have no right to force on the Porto Ricans or the Filipinos institutions of our own which have proved of the highest benefit to us, unless we can see upon other than sentimental ground connected with our own history, that such institutions will now prove beneficial to them in their present condition." He then calls attention to abuses of many of the common law safeguards of individual lib erty to emphasize the fact that even for us their value in their present form may well be doubted. He advocates the abolition of the jury system in civil cases, calling attention to the fact that it is used almost solely in actions for personal injuries. It is effective only with jurors unlikely to be affected by their emo tions and is inseparably interwoven with our system of evidence, which is also unknown to the civil law. The right of the accused to be exempt from testifying he also criticizes as a survival of barbaric times. Other rules mak ing it difficult to convict a defendant he as signs as important reasons for lynch law. And he arraigns the Bar for permitting a portion of its number to obstruct reform legislation. JURISPRUDENCE (Juries). William H. Holt, formerly a judge in Porto Rico, in the October Albany Law Journal (V. Ixvii, p. 298) objects to Secretary Taft's criticisms of "The Jury System," as applied to Porto Rico. He believes that like the right of suffrage, it is one of the instruments of the sovereignty of the people and is an important educational
