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THE GREEN BAG
INTERNATIONAL LAW (Law of Occu pation). The discovery and settlement of America owing to the absence of any inter national rules in regard to new territory caused friction which lasted many centuries. Under the title, " Spheres of Influence and Protectorates," Hannis Taylor tells, in the American Law Review (V. xli, p. 92), on what basis these disputes were settled, and how the experience thus gained has been made use of by the world: "The one new and hopeful expedient in the interest of peace which the partition of Africa has added to the law of occupation is embodied in the device recently agreed upon in various forms by Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and other nations for the prevention of future conflicts as to boun daries. With the history of such conflicts in America to guide them, a systematic effort has been made by many powers to prevent their recurrence in Africa through international treaties of delimitation which define in advance the ' sphere of influence ' through which the growing settlements of any given State may extend. From the sphere thus defined the dominant State has the right to exclude other European States through their own consent, thus leaving the field clear for the free develop ment of its chartered companies and protecto rates. The power thus conferred over a given area is an excluding power and not one of entire and direct control over the affairs of the sphere, either internal or external. . . . The nations colonizing on the coasts of Africa, which have thus reduced to a minimum the chances of conflicts as to boundaries, when the growing populations within their respective spheres shall eventually touch each other, have of course no power to bind those States that have not made themselves parties to such stipulations. And yet the new rule thus established by all who have actually partici pated in the partition of Africa possesses a growing moral force which will no doubt develop it there, as the Monroe Doctrine has been developed here, into a positive canon of international law." INTERNATIONAL LAW (see Public Policy). INTERSTATE COMMERCE (see Foreign Corporations).
JURISPRUDENCE (The Conception of Law). At the opening of the Boston University Law School last fall, Dean Melville E. Bigelow ad dressed the students on the topic, " The Sci entific Conception of Law." The address is printed in the American Law Review (V. xli, p. 27), with some additions, under the title "Economic Forces and Municipal Law." The thesis is as follows: , "The conception of law which the faculty of this law school hold rejects the idea that there are certain ultimate principles of law which govern universally and for all time; the faculty oppose the doctrine both of abstract principles and of the law as a system of precedents in the books governing of their own force alone, propriore vigore, or pointing the way for governing, all questions that may now or hereafter arise —in other words—the past governs the present. "We, of course, admit that the law' is in one sense a system of reasoned jurisprudence; to deny that would be to fly in the face of plain facts; but we hold that to stop with that statement, whether on the footing of the analyt ical or of the strict historical school, is mislead ing in the extreme. It is only within a limited area of the law, as we understand the subject, that the reasoning of the judges, failing prece dents, in other words precedent or reasoning founded upon precedent, governs the decisions of the courts. We hold that the past merely governed itself; that the present alone governs the present. "As we see it, the law is continuous only in time. In point of substance it is broken up into periods of the ascendency of certain social, economic forces. These periods, acting upon judges and legislatures, are the main factors which make our law; accordingly the law of one period may be essentially different from what it was, or what it may be, under another period — I say " essentially different," and not merely as new phases of old doctrine call ing for new decisions may arise. The law, in accordance with this view, is the resultant of conflicting social or political forces, less of course the hindrance of that natural or at least general conservatism of courts and legis latures which, following the line of least resist ance, clings to the past. In other words, the law is the actual product of the dominant energy as far as that energy gains ascendency.
