EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT JURISPRUDENCE (Legal Fictions). James Edward Hogg in the April Law Quarterly Review (V. xxii, p. 172), considers " Legal Conceptions from a Practical Point of View." He shows that legal conceptions bear a con siderable resemblance to those scientific con ceptions which are known as hypothetical assumptions. They differ, however, in that (1) the legal conception may at one time have been a correct representation of actual fact, (2) it is not regarded as a convenient general statement but as an entity, whose existence is assumed to be immutable until changed by competent authority. As a result of the latter quality, legal views of rights which have to be determined in courts of justice, are not identical with the popular views. The author collects illustrations from the fields of constitutional law, property, persons, and procedure. Under the law of persons he sup ports the contentions recently much discussed in legal literature regarding the fiction theory of corporate existence. "The necessity or desirability of making such changes in the law as to bring legal con ceptions into line with popular views must, of course, vary greatly in individual cases. Probably the fictions involved in the concep tions of constitutional law cause less general inconvenience than the fictions in other branches of law, and have some sentimental arguments in favor of their retention. All conceptions, however, which are really ficti tious, involve waste of power to the community, and the burden of proof should be on those who advocate their continued existence. Par ticularly with respect to fictitious conceptions of property rights does reform seem to be advisable; the existence of fictions necessarily impedes transactions with property, and renders the law of property more difficult to acquire and practice. The inconvenience pro duced by long delayed reform in legal con ceptions is illustrated in the case of Fines and Recoveries. The conception of an estate tail being incapable of being barred otherwise than by means of fictitious litigation continued to exist for about 180 years after the first attempt, made during the Commonwealth, to change it. "If legal conceptions could be made to accord with existing modern conditions, fur
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ther necessary law reform would be made easier, and business men and owners of pro perty would have far less difficulty in under standing their rights." JURISPRUDENCE (Sovereignty). In the April Juridical Rericw (V. xviii, p. i), Prof. W. Jethro Brown discusses " Sovereignty." He concludes as follows: "Sovereignty is a conception whose mean ing and incidents must vary with the particular department of thought with which the student is more immediately concerned. In Political Science it may refer to the practical supremacy of (1) A Government; (2) An Electoral Body; (3) A Popular Majority; (4) The State as a Moral Organism. In Jurisprudence the conception may refer to the formal supremacy of (1) A Government; (2) The highest Law-making Body, ordi nary or extraordinary; (3) The State as a Juristic Person. "Such a list can make no pretence to com pleteness, but will serve for the purposes of a practical discussion. The choice between the various types of theory thus grouped must vary according to conditions of time and cir cumstance. So far as the jurisprudence of our time is concerned, the sovereign may be defined as the power whose authority is regarded by law as unlimited, and as the source both of all law and of the authority of all law-making or governmental institutions. Although the location of the sovereign varies in the different legal theories of different nationalities, it seems probable that the jurisprudence of a near future will recognize that the State itself is the true sovereign, and that such a body as the Parliament of Great Britain should be described, not as the sover eign, but as the sovereign-organ." "When lawyers have escaped from the tyranny of forms and have overcome the superstition that they must not regard things in their totality, when they have learnt that, on the contrary, it is only when we so regard them we can hope to comprehend them, they will find some place in legal theory for ideas which have already profoundly affected less conservative branches of learning. They will
