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The Green Bag
unbiased and impartial tribunal is necessary, and with the curtailment of its duties the Commission can be expected to become such a tribunal." Law Reform. "Looking Forward." By James J. Hill. Putnam's, v. 7, p. 62 (Oct.). "The greatest service to the nation, to every state and city today, would be the substitu tion for a term of years of law enforcement for law-making. Get the laws fairly tried, weed out those improper 'or impracticable, curtail the contempt of law that now flourishes under the American system of non-enforce ment, and make the people understand that government means exact and unsparing jus tice, instead of a complex game. This is the only safeguard if respect for and confidence in the governing system itself are not to be gradually undermined." Liberia. See Negro Problem. Marriage and Divorce. "Divorce Laws." By George W. and M. C. Freerks. Central Law Journal, v. 69, p. 184 (Sept. 10.). "Let those who deplore social abuses and unsatisfactory conditions preach and teach against them. But if the divorce laws are to be remodeled, let this be done with a full understanding of what the laws now really are and of the probable effect of proposed new laws upon the abuses aimed at, as well as of the danger of their detrimental effect upon the natural rights of mankind. Uni formity in statutes on this subject might be very desirable, but more important than this it is that default cases be given a stricter scrutiny under existing law by the judges, before granting decrees, and that some person have the duty to properly bring to the knowl edge of the court the real facts, so far as ascer tainable." Negro Problem. "Exit the Black Man?" By Judge Harris Dickson. Hampton's, v. 23, p. 497 (Oct.). "The American negro is on a toboggan slide skidding down to death. The logic of his present status is extinction. He alone can save himself—and yet he keeps pouring the grease upon the slipping places. If he does not stop short and rebuild his shattered vitality, his grave will take its place beside the Maori, the Hawaiian, and the North American Indian, among the races of men who have perished from the earth." Liberia. "Can the Black Man Stand Alone?" By Edgar Allen Forbes. World's Work, v. 18, p. 12155 (Oct.). "Liberia has been making a desperate fight for existence during the last few months— not because of organic weakness nor of inter nal agitation, but because the time had apparently arrived for Great Britain to close the net that had been spread. That the British government or the Sierra Leone gov ernment, or both, have been working out a deliberate plan that would end in the annexa
tion of Liberia nearly everybody in the repub lic firmly believes. Some of the events that have happened recently admit of no other interpretation." Penology. "Beating Men to Make Them Good." By Charles Edward Ruseil. Hamp ton's, v. 23, p. 484 (Oct.). This is a second article on the American prison system. The author summarizes con ditions in a large number of states, and then adds:— "From all this stands out one fact upon which I can put no emphasis too great. "As a general rule, subject, of course, to some exceptions and modifications, where there is contract labor there is corporal pun ishment; where there is no contract labor there is no corporal punishment.
"In these days, therefore, corporal punish ment survives not for reasons of discipline, because discipline is maintained easily enough without it, but to extract from the prisoners the profits of speculators in misfortune. And the men that are subjected to the unspeakable degradation and pain of the lash suffer not so much for their own misbehavior as for the greed of those into whose hands the punishment of our stumblers was never legally committed." Procedure. "The Proposed Universal Court." Editorial. 18 Bench and Bar 94 (Sept.). This article discusses the recommendations of the American Bar Association for a single court in each state having universal juris diction. "The division of courts into superior and inferior courts, the latter for the trial of small cases, with judges who are accorded less honor and who receive less emolument than the judges of the former, is one of the great mistakes of our present system. . . . The day must surely come when the fallacy of de liberately committing small causes to judges of small calibre and on small pay will be clearly recognized and universally condemned." "The Demoralization of the Law, XV." By Ignotus. Westminster Review, v. 172, p. 303 (Sept.). "It is not uninstructive to inquire into the reasons why Anglo-Saxondom, which rightly claims to be in the van of civilization, is so unmistakably behind in the domain of the law. First, as regards this country. Our notorious impatience of strict logical methods, and our preference for haphazard 'muddling through,' is largely to blame But there is more than this. There is the fact noticeable all through our history that our predilections are strongly political. . . . We watch our poli ticians pretty closely; we keep them up to the mark; our interest reacts upon them favourably. . . . Compare this with the senti ments we entertain for our judges. We abso lutely ignore their work, except on a rare occasion when they have blundered. . . . "These considerations apply in full measure
