Review of Periodicals rate-advances, not as now in particular cases
on complaint, but as to entire schedules of rates, prior to their taking effect.
The ex
perience of the last few years has amply proved the need of some such amendment; and it is gratifying to note that President Taft, judging from his public utterances, seems likel to favor the proposal. . . . _ “ minent railway counsel avers that this is no time to reopen the issue of federal rail road legislation;
that, in fact, we are only
just recovering from an era of political hys teria on the subject; and that legislative tinkering thould be postponed until the Hepburn Act has at least had a fair trial. The answer is that the present Administra tion is pledged to this policy,—to the per fecting of the program of President Roosevelt in this regard. . . . "In time of peace prepare for war. The surest protection against the shafts of the demagogue will be found under the egis of publicity and ample federal supervision." "Fair Regulation of Railroads." By Samuel 0. Dunn. North American Review,
v. 191, p. 185 (Feb.). "A law of Massachusetts provided for fifteen years that securities might not be issued except at their market price; what the market price was, to be determined by the state railroad commission. Texas pro hibits the issuance by any railroad of stocks and bonds having a par value more than fifty per cent in excess of the value of its property as fixed by the state railroad commission; and the commission has fixed the “true value" of Texas roads at only forty-ei ht lper cent of their assessment by the State ax card, at fifty per cent of their capitalization and at little less than the amount of their outstanding bonds,
thereby making
the
issue
of
new
securities ractically impossible. Railroad officers of t e highest reputation contend that the administration of these laws has hindered railroad development in both Massachusetts and Texas; and the legislature of Massachu settsin 1908amended the law in that state. . . . "Congress and the le 'slatures of the states should not act until t ey are sure the laws regulating security issues that they shall pass will not so hamper legitimate business as to do more harm than good." "How to Regulate Corporations." By World's Work, v. 19, p. James J. Hill. 12730 (Mar.). "We have been as a nation too ready to look to state and federal legislation for remedies beyond their power to give. You may obstruct and delay for a time, but in the end the inexorable law of experience and the survival of the fittest will prevail. . . . Such combinations as are evil, and some there are, will be found self-destroying." “The Great Railway Rate Battle in the West." By Samuel 0. Dunn. Scribner's, v. 47, p. 364 (Man). Mr. Dunn carefully sums up all the evidence
233
_and concludes that the carriers may have erred or sinned in detail, but the principles for which they contend seem right. See Monopolies. Legal Evolution. “Law in Books and Law in Action." By Prof. Roscoe Pound. 44 American Law Review 12 (Jan-Feb). [1] “Case law has been found unable to hold promoters to their duty and to protect those who invest in corporate enterprises a ainst mismanagement and breach of trust. t has failed to work out a scheme of responsibility that will hold legal entities, or those who hide behind the skirts of such entities, to their duty to the public. . . . Judicial decision is doing little or nothing for improvement of procedure in the face of insistent popular de mand. On all these points we have had to turn to legislation. Juristically, then, we are in a period of stability and the growing point of law is in legislation. . . . "I have discussed at length the effect of stability of juristic thought and the nature of American juristic thought because those are the subjects which the lawyer must ponder. It is there that the divergence between law in books and law in action has a lesson for him. The other two causes may be looked at only in the briefest way. [2] “Ri 'dity of legislation is best illus trated in t e codes of procedure and practice acts, so common in the United States, which
in large measure have defeated their own ends by going too much into detail. Le islation must learn the same lesson as case aw. It must deal chiefly with principles; it must not
be over-ambitious to lay down universal rules. We need for a season to have principles from which to deduce not rules, but decisions. . . . [3] "The third cause mentioned, defective administration, perhaps more than any other cause, is immediately responsible for making law in action difierent from law in the books. . . . We have preserved an etiquette of justice, devised in large part in a past age of formal over-refinement, no small part of which is as out of lace in a twentieth century American court 0 justice as gold lace and red coats u n a modern skirmish line. It is chiefly,
owever, in executive administration
that laws fail of efiect. . . . Puritan jealousy of the magistrate too often results in a legal paralysis of legal administration. Eflective administration is perhaps the great problem of the future." "American Case Law: A Consideration of Certain Factors Bearing on the Develop ment of American Jurisprudence." By Thomas A. Street, Professor of Equity in the School of Law of the University of Missouri. Delivered before the Kansas City Bar Association, December 4, 1909. 13 Law Notes 205 (Feb.). "The statutes of Massachusetts and Maine made no provision for any court exercising full chancery powers, and consequently the
