406
The Green Bag
trial of criminal cases could be needed. The Home Office, had it been a reviewing tribunal, could easily have prevented the carrying out of the sentence of Beck on his first conviction, and would probably have thereby prevented the second arrest and trial. And there can be no doubt that the existence of a judicial tribunal with power to review criminal trials on questions of law and fact, or even on questions of law alone, would have pre vented the miscarriage of justice which oc curred in this case. . . . "When we look back upon the long struggle in England to secure a right of appeal in criminal cases, when we recall the terrible wrong done in the Beck case, which outraged the sense of justice of every right-thinking person not only in England but throughout the civilized world, and when we are con fronted with this act of the British Parlia ment, constituting as it does a virtual admis sion that the old plan was wrong, we cannot but feel that, until this new system has been fully and fairly tested and found wanting, all proposals, no matter how eminent their sponsors, to strike the right of appeal from our criminal procedure must fall upon un heeding ears." "The Denial of Justice." By Samuel Scoville, Jr. Outlook, v. 92, p. 359 (June 12). Some objectionable and out-of-date customs clogging the procedure of the United States Supreme Court are thus indicated in this article:— "The Court sits four hours a day for five days in the week, sitting every week day except Saturday, from 12 noon to 4.30 in the afternoon, with a recess from 2 to 2.30. One of these days each week is practically occu pied by reading aloud the opinions handed down by each judge—a custom smacking of the time when there were town criers instead of newspapers and quill pens instead of type writers. Its official term for the year 1907 comprised thirty-three weeks out of the fifty-two, and officially it worked thirty-three weeks and rested nineteen. This official sche dule, however, does not take into considera tion the recess habit, to which the Supreme Court has fallen a victim, . . . unofficially dividing the year as follows: Sessions, nine teen weeks; recesses, thirty-three weeks." The remedy for delays in the federal and state courts is simple; it is to be found in "simplicity, industry, and publicity. The procedure must be pruned of all the under growth of useless formalities and outworn methods. The bench must be composed of men who can and will work. Finally, there must be that publicity about the quality and quantity of work done which will make for the highest standard." Public Health. "Federal Quarantine Laws." By Prof. Edwin Maxey. 43 Amer ican Law Review 382 (May-June). "We hear.a great deal in these days about the centralization of power in the federal gov ernment, but the fact is that the federal gov
ernment has been slow in developing its pow ers. The only exceptions to this tendency have been at the very beginning when the influence of Hamilton was at its height; during and immediately after the Civil War; during the present decade. But even during these periods there has been evident some thing of the tendency which we have noted in federal quarantine legislation—a tendency to refrain from assuming the full extent of its constitutional authority until the exercise of such authority is forced upon it by the neces sities of the case. If this conclusion is correct, those who really consider the protection of the public health a matter of importance can render a valuable service by doing their share toward developing a public sentiment which will force upon Congress a realization of the fact that the question is considered important and that the people are convinced of the ex pediency of the exercise by the federal gov ernment of the quarantine powers which under the Constitution it has a right to exercise." Eace Discrimination. "Race Distinctions in American Law, V-VI." By Gilbert Thomas Stephenson. 43 American Law Re view 354 (May-June). This installment deals with "The Recon struction of the Marital Relations of Negroes," "Remarriages," "Certificates," "Slave Mar riages Declared Legal by Statute," "Mar riages Between Slaves and Free Negroes," "The Intermarriage of the Races." "The Effect of an Attempted Intermarriage," "The Punishment of Intermarriage," "Cohabitation without Intermarriage," etc. Socialism. "French Labor Unions v. the State." By Alexander Ular. Contemporary Review, v. 95, p. 647 (June). "The public sympathized with the post office strikers. Nobody doubts that in case of brutal provocation, the large labor federa tions would join in a general assault on the state. Nobody doubts that if the Radical Government dared to apply the military code to strikers by mobilizing on paper the whole of the reserve army, and to sentence revolu tionaries by exceptional courts, the whole country would rise against them. In a word, the postmen have proved that nothing can be done against well-organized and self-confi dent state employees." Taylor's Science of Jurisprudence. Dr. Hannis Taylor's side of the controversy grow ing out of the alleged plagiarism committed in his work on "The Science of Jurisprudence" (for previous chapters of this discussion see 21 Green Bag 75, 173, 239) is stated in a communication addressed to Law Notes for June (13 Law Notes 59). Dr. Taylor here charges Dr. Goudy of Oxford with resorting to "unlawful and un precedented expedients in his mad effort to defame me." To convict Dr. Goudy,—
