647
Index to Periodicals Bar Association as the president's address, is worthy of rusal for its vigorous and profound thought. grticularly able argument is adduced to refute the proposition that on a question of fact and of necessity the Supreme Court of the nation may oppose its judgment to those not merely of the state legislatures, but of the state courts, and that the state tribunals may on like questions of fact overrule the judgments of their own state legislatures. This “is a doctrine which although, until recently, generally acquiesced in, has no foundation in sound reason nor sanc
tion in the history of our jurisprudence. It can only be asserted on the theory that our legisla tive bodies are undemocratic, unintelligent and unrepresentative. It is a doctrine which has been grafted upon but which has not been rooted in our English or in our American jurisprudence. It is the product of class pride and of class prejudice. It was not, indeed, until after the Civil War that the doctrine of the supremacy of the courts was ever asserted in relation to the acts of a popular parliament or a popular legislature, when that body was act ing within its legislative domain. In England the doctrine was only announced as a check to an unlawful exercise of the royal prerogative
and never as a check upon the popular parlia ment after that parliament had once assumed form and become in any manner representa tive. . . . “There can, indeed, be no question of the
right and power of the courts to compel public 0 cials to keep within their legal spheres and to prevent, for instance, the executive from
judging or legislating and the legislature from judging or the states from encroachin upon the domain of the national Congress. here is a wide distinction, however, between this and
the setting aside of an act of a legislature, such
clearly ex ressed in industry in the great aggre gations 0 capital can only be overned, so as to preserve an actual rather t an a nominal
individual freedom, by the enactment of wise law;
and they, too, are looking to the courts
to sanction, and not to destroy, new legislative programs, and to the increase of governmental
control over industry to prevent the exploita tion of the people. Hence the issue of criticizing the courts; hence unreasoning defense, and at
times intemperate censure, of judicial decisions involving the Bakeshop Law, the Workmen's Compensation Law, the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, the Oklahoma Bank-Guaranty Law, the
Interstate Commerce Law, and other legislative experiments with the collective principle." “How to Put the People Behind the Law." By Rev. Percy Stickney Grant. North Ameri can Review, v. 194, p. 697 (Nov.). "The working-class outlook, on the whole, it has unfortunately to be noted, is not broad,
and some of the decisions adverse to labor we are obliged to account for (and this is admitted by labor men themselves) as the result of im mature legislation undertaken at the hasty and querulous call of labor. . . . Much of the legis lation in the interest of labor has, as can be seen,
discriminated against corporations and also in favor of local labor as against race and nation ality. Not only was it easier for the courts, but incumbent upon them, to declare such legisla~ tion unconstitutional. The fault may lie in the wrong instincts of the working class, or in the
attempt on the part of legislators to satisfy labor by passing some sort of legislation in its favor, but of such a nature as to make the
declaration of its illegality certain. “If capitalistic control of legislation is in tolerable, and if working-class control would be
as the Eight Hour Labor Law, which is passed
no better, must we not look for a mean between
by a po ular assembly within the undoubted sphere of)its le islation and not for the purpose of oppression, but of protection. The province
capitalistic control and working-class control; that is to say, for a relation between the two that will give to neither undue power? . . . “A weakening of self-confidence may be ob served today in the capitalistic attitude in
of the courts, in other words, is to keep the
public and the ublic officials within the law and not to chec the legislative bodies in the exercise of their law-making powers. This, indeed, with but rare exceptions, has been the
licy of our courts and it should always have n adhered to and have been made clear and certain." Judicial Powers.
See Procedure.
Labor Legislation. "criticizing the Courts." By George V. Alger. Atlantic Monthly, v. 108, p. 656 (Nov.).
"The position in which the American courts are placed today is a uliarly delicate one. On the one side are t ose to whom modern American legislation is the new barbarism threatening the states and nation with a rank growth of meddlesome, ineflicient, unenforci ble laws injurious to industrial development, yet inevitable, unless restricted, as they ask to have it restricted, by new judicial limitations. On the other side are those who contend that legislation of the new type is necessary and unavoidable, that the collective principle so
America, and, at the same time, an increasing sympathy for labor among the intellectuals. Here, then, we have a mental and moral medium in which alone class concession may be secured
and fixed. This is the field, too, in which wider education, mutual confidence and sympathy ought to be most helpful in adjusting popular grievances." Legal History. "History of the French Notarial System." By William W. Smithers. 60 Univ. of Pa. Law Review 19 (Oct.). A history of the oifice of Notary, which "is older than any other now connected with admin istration or jurisprudence in France." Literature.
“The Hooligan."
Study in one act.
A Character
By Sir William 5. Gilbert.
Century, v. 83, p. 97 (Nov.).
This is not the sort of thing we would have expected from Sir W. 5. Gilbert; the grim tragedy of the prisoner under sentence of death is more in the style of Galsworthy. The Gilbert
