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The Green Bag
before I get admitted to the bar, as I can't get it afterwards." "How long have you studied law, Mr. Goldstein?" "This is the end of my first year, your Honor," he answered proudly. "In two years more I will have completed it." "Where are you studying law, may I ask?" "At the Northwestern University, your Honor," and he proudly thrust for ward his broad chest. "It's no use, Goldstein. To keep you on the panel would be a waste of the state's money. Not a lawyer in the city would permit you to sit on a jury when they find out you are studying law at the Northwestern
University. They would be afraid you would know more law than they, and they wouldn't take a chance on you in the j ury room . I will have to excuse you . ' ' "Now, as to these others: the man with a sick wife; the man that runs a private bakery in his basement; the one that says he hasn't sound business judgment; and the German that can't read or write English; and this Socialist; well, in fact, all the rest of you gentle men I will have to hold this time. If it were not that we have to have jurors to finish up our business, we would let you all go." And thus ended the usual return of a petit jury panel in the great city of Chicago.
Reviews of Books THE SUPREME COURT AS ABDICATOR, NOT USURPER The Supreme Court of the United States: With a review of Certain Decisions relating to its Appel late Power under the Constitution. By Edwin Countryman. Matthew Bender & Co., Albany. Pp. xxi, 267 + 12 (table of cases and index). ($2.50.) A BOOK which sets out to subject the reasoning of the Supreme Court of the United States, in important deci sions of the past, to searching scrutiny and the frankest possible criticism, promises a fruitful and constructive treatment of problems of the Constitu tion. Mr. Countryman's method arrests notice when he undertakes to trace the evolution of doctrine from an origin in obiter dictum through the successive higher stages of "cited with approval," "referred to as authority," and "settled law." Such a historical procedure may show insecure foundations for present doctrines, which is the goal of Mr. Countryman's exposition; it savors of
penetration into the very essence of the Constitution. Of such penetration there are abundant evidences, in the author's incisive analysis of some fea tures of the frame of government which the Constitution set up. However, to the student of a living Constitution, and not of a paper document, it can make little difference whether an ac cepted principle declared by the Su preme Court sprang at the outset from an obiter dictum, or arose in a painstaking judicial attempt to settle a particular point at the root of some momentous controversy. If the Supreme Court ap pears to be laying down reasonable doc trine it cannot weaken its reasonableness to prove that the doctrine has a check ered history. There is, indeed, a flaw in the logic which aims to discredit the propriety of Congress exercising con trol over territories and territorial pos sessions, to the disparagement of the
