376
THE GREEN BAG
aimed at the restriction of legislative power. If, unhappily, the judiciary department of the states, or of a number of the states, should also fail in public esteem or confidence, what would become of the governments of the states? Without an upright and efficient judiciary the states cannot endure. Without the states the union of states cannot endure. "Uniformity of law in the several states gains new importance when viewed as a means of upholding the state courts as against the federal courts, and of preserving the just balance between the federal government and the governments of the states. Such uni formity cannot be attained or preserved merely by reducing the law or a portion of the law to a statute or code. It can be attained and preserved only by the united efforts of all who are engaged in the study or administration of the law, in a spirit of loyal devotion to the inherited systems of common law and equity which have descended to us from the past. The most effective organization of courts in the several states, with a view to secure to the public the best administration of justice, and to maintain the science of jurisprudence in spite of the mass of precedents and statutes and the bewildering diversity of rules, will
come only through labors informed and inspired from the same great sources. Upon the quality of the work done by the judges lawyers, and teachers of law in the United States, in their respective spheres, depends the future of uniformity of law in the several states, and, it may almost be said, the existence of state law, and of the states themselves as political sovereignties." UNIVERSITIES. "The Law of the Uni versities. I. General," by James Williams, Law Magazine and Review (V. xxxiii, p. 264). A short article giving some account of the legal history and powers of the universities. WILLS. In the May Illinois Law Review (V.-iii, p. i), Professor Roscoe Pound gives a scholarly analysis of the theory on which the common law should deal with " Legacies on Impossible or Illegal Conditions Precedent," He shows that the doctrine that the condition may be disregarded is based on a disputed doctrine in the Roman law supported only by its rule in favorem testamenti. Under our modern statutes of distribution there is no presumption in favor of a legacy and the same rule should be applied in wills as in contracts. He holds that the question is still open in most American jurisdictions.
