Index to Periodicals j4rticle* on Topics of Legal Science and Related Subjects Chinese Law. "A Study of Chinese Juris prudence, I." By Pan Hut Lo. 6 Illinois Law Review 456 (Feb.). A very able summary of the fundamental laws of the Chinese Empire. Of the penal code he says: "Punishments for crimes and small offenses are comparatively severe and heavy, and those for breach of civil obligations altogether ridicu lous. The provisions are lamentably defective in everything relating to political freedom or in dividual independence, while the treason laws are preposterous. As the standard and concep tion of civilization is being rapidly changed through the march of the western ideas and learning into the East, it needs no prophet to tell that ere long such a code is bound to be radically modified or largely abolished." Conflict of Laws. See Marriage and Di vorce. Corporations. See Voluntary Associations. Criminal Law and Procedure. "Some Char acteristics of English Criminal Law and Proce dure " (continued). By G. Glover Alexander. 37 Law Magazine. Review 162 (Feb.). "Among the very desirable reforms needed in Criminal law are: — "(1) The abolition of the now meaningless distinction between felonies and misdemeanors. ,
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"(2) The revision of maximum and minimum sentences. . . . "(3) The charging of offenses in plain, non technical language. . . . "(4) A Bill is now before Parliament to divide charges of murder into two classes, viz.: (a) murder in the first degree, where the jury think that the prisoner ought to be hanged; (6) mur der in the second degree, e.g., cases of infanticide, joint participation in suicide, etc., in which for many years past it has not been the custom to carry out the death penalty, and the passing of it upon an unfortunate creature who is often more sinned against than sinning, is justly regarded as a needless cruelty. "(5) The general simplification of procedure, which is possible in many cases. "(6) The appointment of more stipendiary magistrates. . . . "(7) The establishment of an Inferior Court of Criminal Appeal. . . . "(8) Finally, there is one matter which, it is to be hoped, will receive the immediate atten tion of Parliament as soon as it meets, viz., the giving of power to the Court of Criminal Appeal to direct or order a new trial to take place in certain cases where it quashes a conviction."
"Procedure in Criminal Law." By James B. Brooks. 21 Yale Law Journal 267 (Feb.). "I believe in the thoroughly Christian human ity of our own laws, and legal system, and I am not ready to approve any law of procedure that has in view the quickest legal immolation in prison or the taking the life of a citizen charged with crime. I believe that it is the certainty of punishment, rather than the nature or immi nence of it, that most influences crime in our country. It is the steady, resistless process of working out even-handed justice, that is most effectual in deterring the commission of crime. Quick works gets quick riddance of the accused man, but does little else, and that is not al together a worthy motive." Criminology. See Immigration. Evidence. "The Rigidity of the Rule against Hearsay." By Ephroditus Peck. 21 Yale Law Journal 257 (Feb.). "The far greater learning of modern judges, the far higher intelligence of modern Junes, the far greater complexity of facts involved in mod ern litigation, all call for the expansion of the power of the trial judge to admit exceptional evidence in exceptional cases, and the abolition, or restriction to narrow limits, of absolute and rigid rules of exclusion of evidence. . . . "It seems to me that the time has come for another reform, less radical than that of the 1840s, but which should at least modify the rigid ity of the rule excluding hearsay." General Jurisprudence. "The Development and Formation of International Law." By Ernest Nys. 6 American Journal of Interna tional Law 1 (Jan.). The writer adduces historical evidence dis proving the proposition that law means con straint (Recht ist Zwang); the early Irish law, for instance, governed social relations in the absence of legislative or judicial power. Three successive phases in the development of law are distinguished. First comes that of esotery, the law being confided only to the ini tiated. Next comes the phase in which juri dical rules are made public. Finally there is the phase of sytematic exposition and commen tary. The form of the earliest law was not clear, precise, or determined; this is a characteristic of later law. "Law is not the creature of legis lators; law even antecedes custom." In India particularly we have the example of ancient law, based on custom rather than on royal ordinances, and self-enforcing, automatic, rather than en forced by a political agent. These considerations readily lead to the con clusion that a sanction of coercive force is not necessary, and in constitutional law it is often lacking.
