Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/313

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

290

The Green Bag

cation, and it is today insisting that through out the country no first-class law school should do aught but strive to be a national lawschool. This position is the one resisted. "I protest against its being dogmatically laid down that the particular materials in the present case-books are the best materials for the preparation for practice in any particular jurisdiction. I protest against the teaching of students by men who do not (I do not say, who cannot) from a complete mastery of the state of the law in a particular jurisdiction on the subjects taught, undertake to assert that these are the proper materials for informing the student of the rules which the courts of some particular jurisdiction apply, or may be expected to apply." Legal History. "The Effect of Tenure on Real Property Law." By James Edward Hogg. 25 Law Quarterly Review 178 (Apr.). "Common law tenure seems to have made possible a theory of land ownership under which all concurrent and successive rights in land known to either Roman or feudal law can be accurately stated, without the disadvantages either of the single domi nium of Roman law or of the split dominium of feudal law. "The germ or suggestion of this theory is to be found in a passage from Spelman's Feuds and Tenures, chapter ii. . . . It will be noticed that Spelman does not say (as we would gather he did from merely reading Blackstone's words) that the King has direc tum dominium. Neither does Coke say so in so many words, though he quotes a Latin sen tence to that effect." That Spelman came nearer than Blackstone to defining a fee simple as a complete proprietorship is this writer's opinion, and the Privy Council, in certain Canadian and New Zealand cases, has shown a disposition to regard Blackstone's theory of allodial ownership as invalid. Thus Henry Spelman, the writer who intro duced the feudal system into England about the middle of the eighteenth century—Maitland's generalization, though paradoxical, is "brilliant and stimulating"—by his study of the continental law of feuds anticipated the modern tendency to treat a fee simple as a complete proprietorship. "The Jurisdiction of the Court of Ex chequer Under Edward I." By Charles Gross. 25 Law Quarterly Review 138 (Apr.). "Below are printed for the first time some cases which throw light on the relations of the Court of Exchequer to the other central courts of England in the thirteenth cen tury. . . . Already in the thirteenth century the jurisdiction of the Court of Exchequer was extensive—much more extensive than one would be inclined to infer that it was from the enactments of Edward I." These cases have been copied from the Exchequer plea rolls in the Public Record Office, Lon don, "which have never been turned to account by historians."

"English Law as an Exponent of English History." By Edson R. Sunderland. 7 Michi gan Law Review 570 (May). "As the English moral sense and spirit of justice early formulated and insisted upon the notion that the right was the main thing, the remedy secondary, a foundation was laid for the systematic development of English law." Passing from Great Britain to Rome, we come to a readable article into which a sur prising amount of rich human material has been compressed:— "The Roman Lawyer—A Sketch." By George L. Canfield. 7 Michigan Law Review 557 (May). Great Roman advocates are noticed, Porcius Cato, Servius Galba, Cicero, Hortensius, Julius Caesar, and others. "Foreign kings and governments at that time needed powerful representatives at Rome, to keep them out of lawsuits, . Probably Cicero derived a large income in this connec tion. It was also customary to remember one's lawyer in one's will. . . . Cicero makes it his boast that he had received in legacies upwards of twenty million of sesterces—the equivalent of, perhaps, two million dollars today. . . . "Julius Cassar . . . was a finished advo cate, trained in the schools of Asia Minor, and a successful practitioner before he commenced his military career at forty. His contempo raries ranked him with Cicero. His Latin was the purest of the day. Both Cicero and Tacitus apply the terms splendid to his ora tory and clear and logical to his argument. There was nothing tricky or puzzling in Cassar, says one of them, everything was clear and bright, as in full sunshine; his voice, his figure, his bearing in court were all character ized by something high-bred and magnificent." Marriage and Divorce. "Divorce." By James Cardinal Gibbons. Century, v. 78, p. 145 (May). "This social plague calls for a radical cure, to be found only in the abolition of our mis chievous legislation regarding divorce, and in an honest application of the teachings of the Gospel." "The Significance of Increasing Divorce." Prof. Edward Alsworth Ross. Century, v. 78, p. 149 (May). "The fact that the likelihood of divorce is in inverse proportion to the length of time the parties were acquainted before marriage suggests the wisdom of requiring a formal, but not public, declaration of intention to marry some weeks before a marriage license will be issued. Law or custom ought to de vise some means of protecting pure women from marriage with men infected with vice. A way may be found to detect and punish the husbands who desert their families. Finally, the fact that intemperance figures in nearly a