52
THE GREEN BAG
CURRENT
LEGAL
LITERATURE
This department is designed to call attention to the articles in all the leading legalperiodicals of thepreceding month and to new law books sent usfor review. Conducted by William C. Gray, of Fall River, Mass. The recent legal magazines keep up to their usual level of excellence in a wide range of articles. Among the papers of general interest- to all concerned with the law, James H. Tufts' address on the relation of psychology to our conception of justice is one of the most noteworthy. His thesis that we are treating men with more regard for their real person ality and less according to abstract rules gets interesting confirmation in Herbert E. Boyle's article on " Extenuating Circumstances in French Law," and A. M. Hamilton's paper on the probation system. General readers will also be interested in C. A. Hereschoff Bartlett's views on " Dissenting Opinions," although few probably will be inclined to go to such length in condemnation as he does. ADMINISTRATIVE LAW. In " Executive Judgments and Executive Legislation," Har vard Law Review (V. xx, p. 116), Edmund M. Parker examines some of the judicial answers to the questions, How far are the decisions of executive officers conclusive? and, To what extent and in what cases are such decisions reviewable by the courts? He criticizes many decisions of the United States and Massachu setts Supreme Courts as having given unsat isfactory and confusing answers on these mat ters, largely owing " to improvident attempts to formulate in the cases actually before them a rule or rules which shall not only dispose of the case at Bar in a satisfactory manner, but also serve as a guide for the disposal of future cases." Several examples are given of the result of this tendency. ADMIRALTY. Under the title " Limita tion of Liability of Vessel Owners," in the December Yale Law Journal (V. xvi, p. 84), James D. Dewell, Jr., gives really a criticism of the teaching of Admiralty in the Law Schools. He considers it strange that owners permit their cases growing out of accidents on vessels to be tried in common law courts before juries, where the liability is unlimited, when under the Act of Congress of 1851 a petition to limit liability to the value of the vessel can be filed in the United States Dis trict Court and in almost every case that result be secured. "The only way I can account for it is that the law of Admiralty has been but meagerly taught in the universities and consequently
lawyers, no matter how great their ability to try cases, have, because of this lack of train ing, not selected the proper forum and in many instances have consequently got their clients into expensive and prolonged litiga tion." Interesting examples of the advantages thus secured are given. Mr. Dewell concludes his article thus: "It is to be regretted that just because the law of Admiralty does not seem to open a field for money-making to the average student, the universities should deny the students the bene fit of the broadening culture derived from the study of this branch of the law. It is strange, too, that when the universities do add this branch of the law to their curriculum, they generally select someone to teach it who has never practiced it. There is no part of juris prudence, if properly presented to a class, that would create so much interest and enthu siasm and would consequently have such a tendency to help students in all other branches of the law, as the study of Admiralty. It would take the students to every shore, get them interested in something beyond their state border line, and make them feel that they were becoming a part of this law of nations which has helped to civilize the sea commerce of the world and has had much to do with the advancement and enlightenment of the peoples of the earth." AGENCY (Delegation of Authority). Prof. Floyd R. Mechem writes in the December Michigan Law Review (V. v, p. 94) on " Dele
