EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT forms of exemptions. These were founded upon the theory that it was detrimental to the best interests of the state to completely impoverish a debtor and thus make him and perhaps his family a burden on the public. Once started on this tendency popular legis latures have, as might be expected, run to the opposite extreme. This is especially true in the western and southern states which, until recently, were debtor communities and desired to attract settlers. "The exemption laws seem thus to be founded upon sound principles of public policy. Whether framed with a view to the protec tion of families alone, or contemplating the protection of the debtor himself besides, these laws are an expression of the regard of the state for its own highest interests, in preserv ing the efficiency of its citizens from total impairment. When exemption laws so far re strict the scope of execution as to accomplish more than this, they unduly limit the rights of creditors, with mischievous results in de basing commercial and moral standards and bringing the efficacy of the processes of the law into disrepute. Such excessive exemptions cannot be justified. On the other hand, the ex emption laws should be broad enough and should be so construed as to accomplish their object. The right of a creditor to complete satisfaction is one that the law should permit to be pursued to the fullest extent, saving only that in its pursuit, for its own welfare, the state should not permit the debtor to be so far impoverished as to render him and those dependent upon him a charge upon the com munity without the means of subsistence or of continuing at some gainful occupation." The author criticises the doctrine of some . states which permits a debtor by contract to deprive himself of the benefit of the exemp tion laws. He thinks that so far as such laws are desirable they should be enforced like the usury laws which are based upon the same public policy, and that a debtor should not be allowed to contract away their protection. EXECUTORS AND ADMINISTRATORS (Judgments). A recent decision of a United States Circuit Court in a case involving the fees of the late Colonel Ingersoll, is criticised by Thaddeas D. Kenneson in the January Columbia Law Review (V. vi, p. 15) in an
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article entitled " The Relation to Each Other of Different Administratorsof the Same Deceased," in which he contends that a judgment for or against an administrator in one jurisdiction should be binding upon an ancillary adminis trator of the same estate in another jurisdiction. In the case in question, however, after failure of one administrator in an action in one jurisdiction, another administrator in another jurisdiction was allowed to recover on the ground that the administrators in different jurisdictions were not in privity of estate. The author ad mits that they were not in privity of estate and calls attention to the fact that successive administrators in the same jurisdiction are not, but he submits that the judgment is con clusive for another reason, namely that they may be said to be in official privity or that each is in privity with the decedent whom he represents, and that just as successive administrators in the same jurisdiction are bound by a judgment for or against the prior administrator so ancillary administrators in different jurisdictions should be. An exam ination of the authorities seems to sustain his contention and upon principle it seems just whether the administrator be regarded as the representative of the deceased or as the repre sentative of the creditors. HISTORY (Public Policy). In the January Harvard Law Review (V. xix, p. 151) Prof. C. C. Langdell elaborately reviews Professor Dicey's recent work entitled, " The Relation Between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century," in an article entitled " Dominant Opinions in England During the Nineteenth Century in Relation to Legislation as Illustrated by English Legis lation or the Absence of it During that Period." It is this latter title which the reviewer deems more truly expressive of the real scope of Professor Dicey's book. The book declared, "that the dominant current of opinion pecu liar to the first third of the century was a combination of the optimism of the time of Blackstone and that dread of innovation and revolution which had been inspired in Eng land by the French Revolution. This opin ion ceased to be dominant on the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, and Professor Dicey says it would have ceased to be dominant several years sooner but for the fact that the
