America's Greatest Institutional Treatise of his predecessors to that ideal of the German jurist (appropriately quoted on p. 31), "Completeness, depth or fundamentalness, and order." The first edition of this work was little more than a study for the present one. The latter indicates that the text has been very largely rewritten, and the work expanded from one to two volumes. The second volume is almost wholly new material. The first edition, published eight years ago, contained about 1,160 pages, while the second one has 2,026, besides preface, table of con tents, etc. The first edition had an index of some eighty-five pages, this one 230 pages, and the table of cases in the first edition was forty-four, in the second eighty-six. The plan of classification is not changed, but the reason for it is much fortified. The Introduction has been condensed, and the general part re duced from 152 to 117 pages, mainly by leaving out a long account of the federal system, and substituting a con clusion; nevertheless vital points have been materially amplified. There has also been considerable transposition, but the integrity of the matter is mainly unchanged, though there has been free and thorough revision, bringing the text up to the present development of the law as expressed in the latest cases. Of particular interest in these days of Rooseveltian effort to co-ordinate the powers of the national and state gov ernments and eliminate "the twilight land" so zealously guarded by those who would thwart the strong arm of the law, is the author's treatment of the Doctrine of Inherent Power (pp. 175180, 246, 247, 250, 253-257), and those who doubt the Doctrine of Non-Enumer ated Powers would do well to read pp. 180 and 181 and pp. 254-259, where it is traced directly to the
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authority of the Supreme Court of the United States. We are tempted to make some obser vations on the mental faculties involved in the execution of the author's prodi gious undertaking, and we use the adjec tive "prodigious" advisedly, for the subject is as broad as our whole law, and from the first page to the last there is evidence of deep research and careful study of a mass of material simply appal ling. Everywhere throughout this broad field there appears that perfect mastery of the system of classification which has made possible the construction of the outline, the formulation of the precise and definite rules and explanations pre sented, while the inductive processes involved in collating and arranging the citations must have involved years of painstaking labor. Judge Dillon has referred to "the con structive genius and practical wisdom" necessary in the achievement of such a work. This, the intellect-constructive, has not inaptly been designated dynamic initiative, and when applied to any great work it produces thoughts, sentences, form, plans, design, system, and finally a result. It is this constructive faculty of the intellect which makes great books possible, a faculty so rare that we call it genius, a faculty indeed so rare that when, as a result of it, a great institu tional work is produced, it becomes a notable event in the world of jurispru dence. Such a performance in the domain of law involves more than the creative intellect. The achievement requires this faculty in combination with the power and genius of research and study so great as to enable the writer to con struct, master, and co-ordinate a great system involving a vast number of de tails. This is the reason why great comprehensive institutional treatises are
