Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/431

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The Green Bag

consin was an obstruction to the right of removal provided for by the Constitution of the United States and the laws made in pur suance thereof.' (202 U. S. 250.) Thus it steems to be recognized that the reason for the Morse decision (20 Wall. 445) was that ob structions to a foreign corporation's right of removal are unconstitutional. "To conclude, the writer believes he has shown that no sufficient reason has been given, nor, so far as one is able to see, can be given, for the exception made by the Prewitt case to the general principle which forbids interference with resort to the federal courts. As it has never been thought that any other exception could be made, it seems that it ought to be established as a universal rule that no state can constitutionally interfere with the resort of any person to a federal court." "The Relative Rights of the State and Federal Governments at the Present Day." By Joseph L. Hull. 43 American Law Review 397 (May-June). "Certain functions of government were originally reserved to the states; those functions are still the object of the state's ex istence. In the execution thereof they are limited to an extent as above outlined by the War Amendments. But the prohibitions upon the states in those amendments were not made in favor of the federal government. Centralization of power was not their object. The rights withdrawn were, for the most part, either withdrawn at the same time from the federal government or else had been previously withheld therefrom. They became a por tion of that class of rights, which in the words of the Constitution, 'are reserved to the people.'" See Bill of Rights, Legislative Procedure, Public Health. Interstate Commerce. "The Commodities Clause Decision." Anonymous. 9 Columbia Law Review 523 (June). "Probably very few lawyers who followed this case closely, and few of those who have been cognizant of the leading authorities on this point in recent years, anticipated any different result from that announced in the prevailing opinion of the court. ... If the statute had been given its natural meaning, a decision upon the second, third and fourth constitutional questions raised by the defend ant's brief would have been inevitable. That decision would have involved almost as inevitably distinguishing,—and perhaps even qualifying to some extent,—broad principles announced in the Lottery, Northern Securities and Union Bridge cases. One cannot refrain from suspecting that it was easier to convince eight judges that they should subscribe to the dissertation on syntax than it would have been to persuade four to allow Justice White to express their several reasons for holding the act unconstitutional or the reverse when -iven its natural meaning. . . .

"As one surveys the field of battle after the smoke has cleared away it would seem as though the bar and business interests of the country would unite in deploring the abortive results attending the statesmanlike efforts of the Department of Justice and counsel for the defendants in seeking to con strue the statute in accordance with its natural meaning and then seeking a definitive pronouncement as to the constitutionality of the act thus naturally construed." See Bill of Rights. Law Reform. "Demoralization of the Law, XII." By Ignotus. Westminster Review, v. 172, p. 651 (June). "The Times has again called attention to the extraordinary uncertainty of the law (as instanced in the result of cases which come before the appellate tribunals) and of the high percentage of reversals and dissents. According to our contemporary the explana tion is to be sought chiefly in the difficulties of interpretation of Acts of Parliament 'drawn up ambiguously, loosely and with remarkable ignorance of the effect of the words used. The judges are left to spell out of barely intel ligible words the policy of the legislature in regard to matters of national importance.' After giving some recent instances, to which we cannot refer from considerations of space, our contemporary sums up thus: 'The uncer tainty of the law often means the silence of the legislature or the obscurity of its utter ances. Our neighbors across the Channel have long ago surmounted this difficulty, and in the simplest possible way. Legislative enactments are handed over to trained ex perts whose duty it is to find a direct and unmistakable form of words in which to clothe them. If it is impossible to find similar experts in this country inside the legal pro fession, they must be found outside. For it is extremely improbable that the public is suffi ciently lawyer-ridden to tolerate the present state of things indefinitely; whether due to natural imbecility or professional artifice, it provides a happy hunting ground for the special pleader and costs the country vast sums in litigation." Legal Education. "American Remem brances of a German Teacher of Roman Law." By Dr. Rudolph Leonhard. 18 Yale Law Journal 583 (June). "As I was sent to America in order to work for a spiritual approximation of the ideas of Europe and of America, and as I knew that nothing brings two peoples nearer to a mutual understanding, I made up my mind to com pare the different laws as much as possible. "But no comparison is fruitful if the two things compared have not a common element which gives a point of view from which they can both be contemplated and understood. "Reflecting, too, that the common influence of Roman terminologies, exercised on the one side upon the Continental Laws, and on the other side upon the English-American Law,