Review of Periodicals
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to the United States. . . . The evil centres round the method of selection of the judges. That method stands condemned for having done the greatest of all possible dis-service to a country; it has brought the adminis tration of justice into contempt. . . "The United States bench is suffering from a more insidious disease than corruption. It is suffering from super-subtlety, the be setting sin of the legal as distinguished from the judicial mind. Super-subtlety can no doubt be pressed into the service of corrup tion, but it flourishes on the English bench without a suspicion of corruption. Corruption is the vice of base judges; no judge, however honorable, is safe from the vice of supersubtlety if he is not possessed of the true judicial faculty, an invaluable gift which a well-ordered community would jealously guard from being prejudiced by the practice of advocacy.' Professional Ethics. "The Lawyer's Func tion." By Donald R. Richberg. Atlantic Monthly, v. 104, p. 489 (Oct.). "It is the present intention to show that there are certain plain lines of distinction between the function of harmonizer and that of parasite, which can be borne in mind by every practising lawyer to the advancement of his own self-respect and for the promotion of.society's esteem for the profession. "A lawyer's activities may be divided into three classes: advice, litigation and law making. ... "Every time a lawyer counsels controversy for the establishment of a right as recognized by existing law, or for the promulgation of new law beneficial to the majority of society, he is exercising his true function, and the charge which he lays upon his individual client and, through him, upon industry and progress in the mass, if reasonable in amount, is well earned and should be cheerfully paid. When, however, a lawyer gives the other kind of advice, the expense, perhaps cheerfully borne by the client who profits personally therefrom, must be finally laid upon society as a whole, which is thereby paying for its own injury, and naturally resents the charge. . . "The lawyer . who endeavors by every means to present fully and completely all the elements of his client's cause, and to point out, with all the directness consistent with courtesy and calm, the defects in his opponent s presentation, is fully meeting his responsibility to give a conscientious judge all the informa tion obtainable bearing upon the question at issue. He is therefore promoting speedy as well as just settlement. On the other hand, the lawyer who, by every artifice at his command, endeavors to cloud the strength of his opponent's cause, not striving to show the real weaknesses of testimony, but, by befuddling witnesses, attempting to create false weaknesses; who endeavors in his own case, not so much to bring out all of the strength of his actual position, as to build up a situation mixed of truth and supposition which may give his client an advantage—
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this lawyer is not only breeding distrust of the law in the minds of every one in the court room, but is making for ultimate injustice for both his client and his adversary. . . . "A mass of law-making, in fact, one might almost say the mass of law-making to-day, is devoted to the promotion of special in terests, regardless of whether the common good is served or not. The lawyers who devise such schemes, and the lawyers in the legislature who allow such bills to become laws, are remarkably plain examples of the parasitical class. . . . "It would seem reasonable to expect that lawyers, as those who face daily the problems of the fulfillment and breach of obligation, and hence are keenly observant of the moral growth of a community, will strive to better their works in even greater degree than their fellows. The position of counselor is indeed difficult to fulfill for one who does not feel that he possesses a keener, deeper insight into the complex questions of right and wrong than is within the comprehension of the one who comes to him for advice." Race Problem. "The Conflict of Color; II. The Yellow World of Eastern Asia." By B. L. Putnam Weale. World's Work, v. 18, p. 12111 (Oct.). "It would be well for European statesmen to realize that in eastern Asia the most knotty of world-problems may have presently to be solved by force. . . . What can very easily happen is that the federation of eastern Asia and the yellow races will be so arranged as to exclude the white man and his commerce more completely than any one has yet dreamed of. And this is equivalent to saying that the entire economic situation throughout the world is in danger of being radically altered and the present balance of power entirely upset from the fact that eastern Asia, led by Japan, may step by step erect harriers so as to restrain the white man." Race Discrimination. The problem of race discrimination arises from the latent if not always articulate conviction of the American people that each individual deserves to be dealt with on his merits, and from the absence of clear proof that the same logic which applies to individuals applies to races also. The proposition that the Chinese or the Japanese can be excluded from immigration without unjust discrimination between in dividuals is of course absurd, but men some times refuse to see the absurdity, and that perversity creates the problem that would not otherwise exist. The phases of this problem which are concerned with the "Chinese and Japanese in America" are discussed . in the latest number of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, which has over a score of papers by wellinformed writers dealing with the general topic. From these we select the four or five likely to be of greatest interest to the legal profession:— "Misunderstanding of Eastern and Western
