Latest Important Cases and records the popular vote on constitutional amendments The classification extends to many subordinate topics, and renders a mass of useful information readily accessible. The Yearbook of Legislation for 1907 contains the similar Index for the previous year, covering 7672 acts, making a much greater number of pages. This volume also contains the useful Digest of Governors' Messages. A consolidated Review of Legislation, with contribu tions from specialists, reviewing the messages and statute laws of the years 1907 and 1908 is to be issued later NEW BOOKS RECEIVED RECEIPT of the following new books, which will be reviewed later, is acknowl edged :— The Evolution of Law; a Historical Review. By Henry W. Scott. Borden Press Publishing Co.,
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New York. [1908.] 4th ed. Pp. xii, 120 +9 (index) . International Law. By T. Baty, D.C.L., LL.D., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. Longmans, Green & Co., New York. Pp. 346 + index 18. The Courts of the State of New York; their History, Development and Jurisdiction. By Henry W. Scott. Wilson Publishing Co., New York. [1908.] Pp. 506. ($5.) A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, for the Use of Students at Law and of Medicine. By Mar shall D. Ewell, M.D., LL.D. 2d ed. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. Pp. 407 (index). (J2.50 net.) A History of Modern Banks of Issue; with an Account of the Economic Crises of the Nineteenth Century and the crisis of 1907. By Charles A. Conant. 4th ed. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London. Pp. 721 -(-bibliography and index 30.
Latest Important Cases Banking and Currency. Bank Guaranty Law of Nebraska in Violation of Fourteenth Amendment. U. S. The United States Circuit Court at Lincoln, Neb., held the bank guaranty act of Nebraska unconstitutional, in a decision recently rendered. The chief objection of the court to the act was that it attempts to exclude individuals from engaging in the banking business, unless they do so through the agency of a corporation. It is also pointed out that— "The act not only attempts to exclude individuals from engaging in the banking business, unless they do so through the agency of a corporation, but also attempts to impose upon them as a condition to their engaging in that business even in that form, a duty to make good the obligations of all other bankers in the state to their depositors. We are of opinion that this cannot be done consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment to the national Constitution or with the state con stitution, and that the act is therefore void." "Those who favor a genuine bank currency," says the Springfield Republican, "are as mortally hit by this strange Nebraska de cision as those who favor mutual deposit guaranty." Contempt. Violation of Preliminary In
junction by Published Declarations—Defiance of Authority of the Courts. D. C. In the important case of Gompers, Morri son and Mitchell v. Bucks Stove & Range Co., decided November 2, the Court of Appeals of the district of Columbia affirmed the decree of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia adjudging President Samuel Gompers, Secretary Frank Morrison and Vice-President John Mitchell of the American Federation of Labor guilty of contempt of court. Mr. Justice Van Orsdel, delivering the opinion of the court, after discussing several technical points of procedure, and noting the distinction between criminal and civil contempts, said :— "Individual interests dwindle into insig nificance when compared with the higher principle involved in this cause. The funda mental issue is whether the constitutional agencies of government shall be obeyed or defied. ... If an organization of citizens, however large, may disobey the mandates of the courts, the same reasoning would render them subject to individual defiance. The one has no greater rights in the eyes of the law than the other. Both are subject to the law, and neither are above it. . . . "If a citizen, though he may honestly believe
