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limitations on the length and frequency of sessions, which have resulted in more hasty and slipshod law-making than one would look for under a system of annual sessions of indeterminate length. Terms of office are frequently limited to a single session, forcing the incumbent to devote a disproportionate share of his energy to his campaign for election, and filling the legislatures with novices whose services will be dispensed with as soon as they have acquired a brief training. Salaries have been fixed at a low level. With legislatures thus con stituted it is surely no wonder that our statute law has not been of better quality as These regardsdefects both form are and known substance. to all dis passionate critics of our institutions, but happily the Wisconsin idea of a competent bill-drafting agency is sure to make headway, and many of the states have traditions of sound procedure and organization which are maintained in a manner that affords comfort and assurance. We need not go to England for models but have them here at home, and Mr. Jones's book should help to
bring about the introduction in all the states of approved practices tried and tested by the experience of the more fortunate of them. BOOKS RECEIVED Some Influences in Modern Philosophic Thought: Being the fifth series of John Calvin McNair Lec tures before the University of North Carolina, de livered at Chapel Hill. April 19. 20 and 21. 1912. By Arthur Twining Hadley, President of Yale Univer sity. Yale University Press, New Haven. Pp. 142 + 4 (index). ($1 net.) Justice and the Modern Law. By Everett V. Abbot, of the bar of the City of New York. Hough ton Mifflin Company, Boston. Pp. 285 + (table of cases) + 9 (index). ($1.60 net.) Certainty and Justice: Studies of the Conflict between Precedent and Progress in the Develop ment of the Law. By Frederic R. Coudert. D. Appleton & Company, New York and London. Pp. 320. ($1.50 net.) Malingering and Feigned Sickness. By Sir John Collie, M.D., J.P., Medical Examiner London County Council; Chief Medical Examiner Metro politan Water Board, Consulting Medical Exam iner to the Shipping Federation, etc.; assisted by Arthur H. Spicer, M.B., B.S. Lond., D.P.H. Illus trated. Longmans, Green & Co. New York. Pp. 321 + 19 (index). ($3 net.) The Supreme Court and Unconstitutional Legis lation. By Blaine Free Moore, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of Political Science, George Washington University, sometime Curtis Fellow in Columbia University. (Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, v. 54, no. 2, whole no. 133.) Columbia University, New York; Longmans, Green & Co., agents. Pp. 127 and appendices 30. ($1 paper.)
Index to Periodicals Jlrticles on Topics of Legal Science and Related Subjects Administration of Justice. "A Land of Law and Laxity." [Anon.] Blackwood's, v. 193, p. 666 (May). "America's common law is practically the same as the English or the Canadian law. Contrasted, in respect of convictions, with North-west Canada, a new country much alike in social conditions and requirements to the less advanced portions of the United States, what do we find? While in the North-west Canadian courts the convictions run to eighty per cent, in the like-conditioned territories of the states they do not average one-half that figure, and in many places they do not reach even twentyfive per cent.
"Besides the shortcomings in the adminis tration of justice, the law itself wants over hauling." Biography. "Lord Mansfield." By H. H. Hagan. 1 Georgetown Law Journal 207 (May). "In the field of biography he is represented only by the antiquated and stilted life by Holliday, a contemporary, and Lord Campbell's sketch in the Lives of the Chief Justices — a work open to the same objections though in a lesser degree. A readable modern biography of Mansfield has yet to be written." "Confederate Portraits: Judah P. Benjamin." By Gamaliel Bradford, Jr. Atlantic, v. 11l, p. 795 (June).
