The Green Bag
32
legal bearings is not treated, and no effort has been made to cite other than American cases, the work is a complete manual of the law of the liquor trafiic in the United States, intelligently designed and skillfully executed. The arrangement is logical and convenient. Opening with two chapters devoted to definitions, the treatise proceeds to consider
the provisions of the federal Constitution and the efIect of statutes and municipal ordinances, and to consider fully such subjects as taxes, licenses, local option, civil damage acts, search and seizure, sales by social clubs, injunction and abatement, indictments and informations, and evidence. While such topics as returns by druggists, Sunday sales, sales to minors, liability of servant or agent and adulteration do not appear in the chapter headings, they are adequately treated, as the excellent index shows. The typography of the book is satisfactory. VIRGINIA COLONIAL DECISIONS Virginia Colonial ‘Decisions. Sir lJohn Randolph and b
Decisions of the General
The Reports by
Edward Barradall of
are practically absent, and those in contract and debt are not numerous. Of actions in ejectment or in detinue there are an abund ance. The explanation of this one-sidedness of the collection seems to be found not in the limited jurisdiction of the General Court of the colony, as it possessed broad powers, but in the special equipment of the two reporters, whose learning in the law of real and personal property was remarkable and who seem to have selected cases in which they could include their own arguments as counsel, the judgment of the court being in all cases brief and reduced to writing only in the form of notes. Primogeniture with entails, “very con stantly docked on application by the General Assembly." and the English laws of descent generally were followed in the colony. Cita tions from the old English reports are there fore frequent, and the two reporters show a learning and an industry which evidence the extraordinary vitality of the old English common law on American soil in the Colonial period.
urt of Virginia, 1728
1741. Edited, with Historical Introduction, by R. T. Barton. 2 v. Boston Book Corn any. Boston. V. 1, pp. xxviii+lntroduction 50+
Randolph's Reports 118; v. 2, Barradall's Re~
ports. pp. 394. (37.) F the entire Colonial period of one hundred and sixty-nine years, the only Virginia cases of which reports have come down to posterity are those now included in these two volumes, with the exception of a few of a later time reported by Jefferson and a very few by William Hopkins. The reports of Sir John Randolph, at one time Attorney General of Virginia, occupy only one hundred pages, those of Edward Barradall filling the entire second volume. The bulk of the first volume consists of an interesting historical introduction by the editor. The reports will scarcely be considered to have more than an antiquarian interest, but Mr. Barton's vivid sketch of conditions in Colonial Vir ginia gives the work a human flavor, and permanent value is insured by the accuracy with which the transcription of old manu scripts has been made. Students of the earlier history of the com mon law in this country will find much to interest them in these reports. There is no very wide range of subjects, most of the cases turning on questions of titles to slaves and to real property, and involving the con struction of wills or devises. Criminal actions
SULLIVAN ‘S BUSINESS LAW American Business Law, with 1 Forms. By {aohn . Sullivan, A.M., LL.B., of t e Philadelphia ar, nstructor in Business Law at Universit of ork. Pennsylvania. D. Appleton & C0,, New Pp. x1. 424+ index 9. ($1.50 net.)
POPULAR manual of business law,~ useful _ to students of that subject and to buslness men generally, prepared by a lawyer particularly well fitted to write such a book and so well executed as to deserve the ap proval of the bar, is what has been accom plished by Mr. Sullivan in the short work here considered. The subject is divided up into five general divisions: (1) contracts, (2) agency, partnership, and corporations, (3) personal and real property, (4) suretyship and guaranty and insurance, (5) estates of
deoedents. The topics are treated in a logical order which helps the lay reader to form the notion of an orderly legal system, and no fault will be found with the general perspective of the author or with his state ment of special rules. The book is written in language for the most part untechnical, but brief citations are included for purposes of illustration. The work should prove an excellent one for the class of readers whose needs it is designed to meet, and especially for young men who are debating whether to take up serious study of the law.
