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The Green Bag
is quite different. The two leading principles of it are that every right may be enforced by the courts, and that the purpose of such en forcement is the creation of the condition which would exist if the right was complied with voluntarily and without judicial help. Therefore specific performance is in much greater degree than with us a feature of the German law. The resulting rules of law are described at length. Torts. See Admiralty. Torts ("Legal Cause"). "Some Suggestions Concerning 'Legal Cause' at Common Law," by Joseph W. Bingham. Columbia Law Re view (vol. ix, p. 16). Attempting to throw light on a subject which is "in a chaos of confusion and uncer tainty." The author divides the problem of legal cause into two branches: "(1) For what consequences of an act or omission which constituted a breach of a legal duty owed plaintiff is defendant respon sible to plaintiff? "(2) For what consequences of an act or omission which constituted a 'legal' default towards some other person is defendant respon sible to plaintiff?" An examination of cases on the first branch of the problem leads to the induction "that a wrong is not the 'legally blamable' cause of a concrete sequence if the prevention of that se quence did not fall within the purposes of the infringed duty; and that if it is not the 'legally blamable' cause of the sequence, it cannot be the 'legal' cause of any consequence of the sequence. This sounds reasonable. Why should a defendant be responsible for occurrences entirely extraneous to the pur poses of his duty? To hold him responsible would be to exact an arbitrary penalty be yond compensation for his wrong in the form of involuntary insurance. . . . Will the oppo site induction hold true within the limits of our problem? Is a defendant responsible for any concrete sequence if the prevention of that sequence was within the purposes of his duty? Obviously, the answer prima facie should be 'Yes.' " The article is to be con cluded in another number. Water Law (Appropriation). "Priority in Western Water Law," by Samuel C. Wiel. Yale Law Journal (vol. xviii, p. 189). "Beginning with Irwin v. Phillips, 5 Cal. 140, decided in 1855, a series of decisions, and thereafter of statutes, established in all West
ern jurisdictions the system of appropriation of waters as distinguished from the common law of riparian rights. The generally accepted idea, supported by most authority, is that an appropriator's rights are governed only by priority and beneficial use; that a prior appropriator, so long as he (without change) de votes the water to a beneficial use, has an exclusive right, independent of and para mount to any subsequent appropriator on the same stream. "Yet there has always been a minority current of authority contending that the exclusiveness of a prior right should be recog nized only to a certain degree and that priorities should not be enforced when to do so would be 'unreasonable' to water users upon the same stream, though subsequent in time of use." This, with the changed conditions of the present day, is likely to be a growing doc trine. The decisions, which as a whole so firmly hold to the exclusiveness of priority, were given while the public domain was a vast unsettled region, and rights were to be adjusted between a few individuals rather than whole communities. "Today the lands have been far more fully settled, the water users on many streams are beginning to crowd each other, and the 'exclusiveness' rule of priority comes more and more in con flict with the community idea. Justice is coming more and more to demand an equi table co-relation of the users for the common good, and these changed conditions have caused here and there revivals of the idea that the priority must be reasonable, all things and evidence being considered, or it will not be fully enforced." The author briefly reviews the cases which reveal this growing tendency. Water Law. "Running Water," by Samuel C. Wiel. Harvard Law Review (vol. xxii, p. 161). "The law of running water (watercourses) is a development of the rules under which one may take into his own possession and make his private property a portion of a flow ing mass which in its natural course and wan dering is uncontrolled by man and belongs to no one. There is a large body of law specify ing who may make this transition and to what limitations they are subject, forming in the common law 'the law of riparian rights', and in the West, 'the law of appropriation.' It is our object here, by presentation of
