written if they had lived, would meet with very slight encouragement. " The judicious Mr. Bowdler " once edited and expurgated Shakespeare, designed for the Young Person, but it received contempt and ridicule. Mr. Howells would perhaps like to adapt Sir Walter Scotfs novels to his own pattern of kitchen photog raphy, but however great may be the demand for Scott or Howells, there is none for Howells-Scott. There is, and long will be, a demand for Taylor on Evidence, and perhaps there may spring up a demand for Lewis on Evidence, but we cannot imagine that there will be any, at least in this country, for LewisTaylor. We prefer our Taylor " straight," and sympathize with the Law Journal in the "regret" that '• must be felt that the original sentences in Judge Taylor•s book have commenced to suffer effacement."
Assaults ox Judges. — The Law Journal says : "The only modern instance of a judge of the High Court being assaulted on the bench is afforded by the reckless act of the American who threw an egg at Vice-Chancellor Malins — an offence for which hewas kept in prison for six months, at the end of which period he was placed on board a ship bound for New York." That was simply a motion for a new trial ab ovo.
NOTES OF CASES. The Statue Case. — A completely novel ques tion of law was raised in Schuyler z'. Curtis, 64 Hun. This was an action for an injunction brought by a nephew and stepson of Mrs. Mary A. Hamilton Schuyler, deceased, to prevent the procuring by sub scriptions, and the exhibition, at the late Chicago Exposition, of a statue of the deceased woman, by an association known as " The Woman's Memorial Fund," and to be designated " The Typical Philan thropist." The defendant's design also embraced a statue of Miss Anthony as " The Representative Re former." The deceased was not a public person. An injunction was issued, and this was sustained by the^general term of the Supreme Court, Chief Judge Van Brunt denouncing the project as an " audacious claim," unprecedented in the law, and declaring that to sustain it would make " a blot " upon our juris prudence. He went the length of saying that no person, public or private, could be subjected, living or dead, to this compulsory form of portraiture. But this doctrine is now reversed by the Court of Appeals, Judge Peckham giving the opinion. The substantial ground of the decision is contained in the following extract : — "Whatever the rights of a relative may be, they are not,
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in such a case as this, rights which once belonged to the deceased, and which a relative can enforce in her behalf and in a mere representative capacity, as, for instance, an executor or administrator, in regard to the assets of a deceased. It is not a question of what right of privacy Mrs. Schuyler had in her lifetime. The plaintiff does not represent that right. Whatever right of privacy Mrs. Schuyler had died with her. Death deprives us of all rights in the legal sense of that term, and, when Mrs. Schuyler died, her own individual right of privacy, what ever it may have been, expired at the same time. The right which survived (however extensive or limited) was a right pertaining to the living only. It is the right of pri vacy of the living which it is sought to enforce here. That right may, in some cases, be itself violated by im properly interfering with the character or memory of a deceased relative, but it is the right of the living and not that of the dead which is recognized. A privilege may hegiven the surviving relatives of a deceased person to pro tect his memory, but the privilege exists for the benefit of the living, to protect their feelings and to prevent a viola tion of their own rights in the character and memory of the deceased." Judge Peckham regards the plaintiffs' contention as " wholly fanciful," and the proposed exhibition "not such as might be regarded by reasonable and healthy minds as in the slightest degree distressing or tending in the least to any injury to those feelings of respect and tenderness for the memory of the dead which most of us possess, and which ought to be con sidered as a proper subject of recognition and pro tection by civilized courts." He admits, obiter, that such a project in Mrs. Schuyler's lifetime would, " perhaps," have been an unjustifiable "violation of her individual right of privacy." He thinks that no violence would be done to anybody's legal rights by the exhibition of the statue with that of Miss Anthony, and pays the latter woman a very high compliment (which is also obiter) . He scouts the argument that the statue woidd not be a likeness because there is no extant portrait or other means from which to copy. He deprecates the inference that under the decision "the feelings of relatives or friends may be outraged or the memory of a deceased person degraded with impunity by any person who may thus desire to affect the living. The rights of such persons will remain the same after as they were before our present de cision and will be wholly unaffected by it. We simply say that in this case the defendants have proposed to do nothing which ought to affect unpleasantly the mental condition of any sound, reasonable and intel ligent man or woman, and therefore an injunction ought to have been refused." Judge Gray dissents very strenuously, and is of opinion that the family of a dead lady who was so retiring that she left no likeness of herself, had a right to object to a notoriety forced upon her memory and upon them. He observes: " 1 cannot see why the right of privacy is not a form of property, as much as is the right of complete immunity of one's
