Reviews of Books determine whether a particular enact ment will be effective or not, and to determine just in what particulars it is defective. Tests by actual enforcement and judicial interpretation also consume time. The process of amendment or modified enactment and the repetition of experimental tests cannot be hastened. In many modern laws now highly effective we can trace the history of the principles involved to early England or perhaps to ancient Rome, and their present efficiency is due to centuries of such experiment as we are here consider ing. It is the slowness of this process which is so irksome to the enthusiastic advocate of reform. It is useless, how ever, to grow impatient with the work ing of natural forces. Nature, whether in the formation of a solar system or the evolution of a bi-valve or the develop ment of a social institution, goes about
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it in her own way and, will not be hurried. So long as the state is a living, growing organism and the development is progressive, there is no cause for despondency. The principles here emphasized are pertinent to the discussion of any of the reforms by means of legislation now being so generally advocated in this country. Intelligent human activity is an important factor in the development of governmental institutions, but to make it effective, reformers must take into account first, social conditions as they actually exist and the underlying social forces and their modes of opera tion; second, the fundamental nature of law and the method by which an efficient law is evolved. Any reform movement which fails to take cogni zance of these fundamental facts must of necessity prove futile.
Tionesta, Pa.
Reviews of Books GERMAN LEGAL LITERATURE Guide to the Law and Legal Literature of Ger many. By Edwin M. Borchard, Law Librarian of Congress. Library of Congress, Washington, D. C. Pp. 188+23 (glossary) + 14 (index). (For sale by Superintendent of Documents, Gov ernment Printing Office, 65 cts.) Jurisprudence in Germany. By Edwin M. Bor chard, Law Librarian of Congress. 12 Columbia Law Review 301 (Apr.).
MR. BORCHARD'S Guide to the Law and Legal Literature of Germany is the first of a series designed to make accessible to the American lawyer, and to the American legislator as well, the most important legal lit erature of the civilized states of the world. The work has not been carried out in the perfunctory spirit of the
time-serving bibliographer, but exhibits qualities that call for admiration, and is to be treated as a scholarly, critical monograph on German legal literature, written by one whose acquaintance with it is not superficial, but embraces the tendencies which have been at work in German legal thought, and the di vergent theories and methods of the important writers. Sheldon Amos's remark, made forty years ago, holds true today: "Modern jurisprudence is emphatically a German creation." Not only do we owe a great debt of gratitude to Professor Pound, for luminously expounding the theories of recent Ger man jurists, but Mr. Borchard has
