We notice in The Law Journal for Nov. 17th, that the Attorney-General, Sir F. E. Smith, who responded to the toast on behalf of the Bar, said that the lawyers of England, consisting equally of the Bar and of solicitors, to the number of 10,000 men, had rallied to the colours in the war. Never again ought that toast to be confined to the Bench and Bar of England. In future, he suggested, it should be 'The Bench and Lawyers of England.'

The Law Journal for Dec. 1st, says

'One cannot easily imagine the Bar Council passing a resolution urging the Judges to make their judgments more concise. Yet such an interesting spectacle has been afforded by the American Bar Association, which has, we hear from the American Law Review, recommended that a memorial be presented to the Federal and State Courts requesting a conscious effort at the shortening of judicial opinions.' It would seem that many American Judges need to be reminded that 'few cases call for a treatise on the law down to date,' and that a recent judgment in a criminal case, which, as reported, occupies no fewer than thirty-nine pages, is to be regarded as a typical instance of judicial verbosity on the other side of the Atlantic. It is not easy to imagine the Bar Council making a similar representation, for the simple reason that the English Judges, at the present day, at any rate, cannot be accused of any undue tendency to wordiness. As the Bar has grown less rhetorical, the Bench has become more concise. Both have come to recognise with Fuller, that the plainest words are the profitablest oratory in weightiest matters, and, except on very rare occasions, the note of eloquence is never struck in our Courts.'

The Law Times of Nov. 17th concludes an Article on Part Performance and Payment of Rent in connection with the case of Chaproniere v. Lambert, noted by us in our December number (p. 857), by saying

This disposes of all the supposed reasons given for the rule that payment is not of itself enough to constitute part performance within the meaning of the equitable doctrine of part performance. None of them seems at all satisfactory, and we are forced to the conclusion that the whole rule simply grew by accident side by side with other rules based on sounder principles. But it is too late to doubt now that part payment is not part perform

ance?'

The Solicitors' Journal for November 3rd calls our attention to a recent and interesting American case, The Co-operative Law Company, 198 N.Y. 479, upon the question whether a company organized, for the purpose of engaging in the practice of the law by means of a staff of lawyers, was a corporation within the meaning of the Business Corporations Law, which provides that 'three or more persons may become a stock corporation for any lawful business.' The argument for the appellant, which was adopted by the Court, was that the 'lawful business' referred to in the Act must be taken to mean a business lawful to all who wish to engage in it. The practice of the law is not a business open to all, but a personal right limited to a few persons of good moral character with special qualifications. The right to practise is in the nature of a franchise from the State conferred only by merit. It is not a lawful business except for members of the Bar who have complied with all the conditions required by statute and the rules of Courts. As these conditions cannot be performed by a corporation, it follows that the practice of the law is not a lawful business for a corporation to engage in. As it cannot practise directly, it cannot indirectly by employing competent lawyers to practise for it, as that would be an evasion which the law will not tolerate.

on

The American Law School Review for December contains the speech of the Hon. S. D. Fess before the House of Representatives on The Reichstag and German System of Government, which is full of information, but contains the extraordinary statement the King of England can prorogue, but cannot dissolve Parliament. He can do one as much as the other, the advice of his responsible ministers. Another interesting item in this number is a long paper by Professor Reed Powell on Law as a Cultural Study, a subject assigned to him at the last meeting of the American Bar Association, and which he understands as meaning law 'considered in its relations to the whole of

life with which it is interwoven,' as distinguished from law as a professional study. He tells us that

The goal is that more and more members of the legal profession shall attain wisdom and influence in shaping the development of the law as a social institution, and shall cease to be content with promoting or protecting the particular interests that chance to offer them retainers.'

It is a very desirable goal, no doubt, but we are not sure that we shall take our business to the lawyer who pursues law too much as a cultural study. There are, also, papers on the Teaching of Legal Ethics, and Suggestions as to a Methodical Study of English Literature, the latter by Mr. Hampton L. Carson, of the Philadelphia Bar.

We have all heard of letters addressed "Canada, U.S.A.," but would not have expected Law Notes, in reproducing in its December issue our paragraph about Mr. Gerard's Order of the Bath, to refer to us as 'one of the "States" law papers.'

Abstracting Sir John Macdonell's Article in the XIXth Century on "The True Freedom of the Seas," -a subject exciting much popular interest nowa-days -The Solicitors' Journal for Nov. 10th says

Then

'As regards times of peace, there is now no question as to the seas being open and free for the common enjoyment of all. comes the question as to the freedom of the seas in time of war. Obviously a striking infringement of this is the use of mines, against which Great Britain protested at the last Hague Conference, and which the late Senor Triana tried to stop. The story of the German opposition is well known. .. Further there are the various rules as to capture at sea which maritime law has sanctioned, and which undoubtedly interfere with the freedom of the seas in time of war. The tendency before the war was to relax these.... It is now seen clearly enough that rules of warfare at sea cannot be relaxed while German practices both on land and at sea increase in ruthlessness. 1. He finds . that the real enemy of the freedom of the seas in recent times, that State which has violated that freedom most flagrantly is the State which talks loudly of freedom of the seas.'

The Harvard Law Review for November publishes a very valuable Special Number comprising a Treatise

by Léon Duguit entitled The Law and The State. We have only space to quote the following lines regarding it from Professor Laski's admirable Note at the end:

'Roughly speaking, M. Duguit denies at once the personality and sovereignty of the State. He denies the personality of the State on the ground that it is a clumsy fiction. The only realities are human beings; and to attribute their personality to what is a mere bracket connecting the collective action of some few of their number seems to him an antiquated anthromorphism that imperils the scientific basis of law. He denies the sovereignty of the State because it seems to him to imply the existence of rights where he sees only the existence of duties. Starting from the obvious fact of social interdependence, he insists that the only justifiable legal theory of the State is one that should enable it to satisfy the clear necessities of the time. But since that accomplishment depends upon the effort of each one of us, all that we possess is not the right to obtain the satisfaction of our individual wills, but the duty to contribute our energetic co-operation to the satisfaction of the social need. For M. Duguit, the State is no more than a group of men between whom, through a variety of historical circumstances, a differentiation between rulers and subjects has been introduced. It is not, in his view, an adequate defence of sovereignty as exercised by the rulers, to discuss its origins; the only justification of any policy is the contribution it makes to the social need. Upon each of us, therefore, is cast the duty of narrowly scrutinizing the action of public authority to see if it fulfils this objective test. If it does not, it cannot, for us, have any legal validity whatever."

The Harvard Law Review for December contains Articles on Contracts to Refrain from Doing Business or from Entering or Carrying on an Occupation by Albert M. Kales; The State as Defendant under the Federal Constitution by William C. Coleman; Monopolizing at Common Law and under Section Two of the Sherman Act by Edward A. Adler; and Some Problems in Specific Performance by George S. Clark.

Among Articles in other current legal periodicals we notice: in Virginia Law Review for November, The Legal Literature of the War, by Lindsay Rogers; in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review for December, The Fusion of Law and Equity by Edward Robeson Tavlor; Intervening Impossibility of Per

:

formances as Affecting the Obligations of Contracts by William J. Conlen; The Surety by William H. Loyd: In Case and Comment, Liberty-Its Substance and its Shell, by Hon. A. O. Stanley, Governor of Kentucky in the Southern Law Quarterly for November, Compulsory Military Service by William Irwin Grubb, Notes on a Disputed Point in the Law of Deceit by William C. Dennis, the point being whether this is an exception to the general rule that the misrepresentations laid as the basis for an action of deceit must relate to past or existing facts,-where there was at the time the promise was made an intention on the part of the promisor not to keep it, but merely to use the promise as an instrument to defraud the promisee: in the Illinois Law Review for December, on Lawyers of England How They are Made, by James H. Winston, and A Criticism of Our Law Schools by H. J. Darby: in The Michigan Law Review for December, on A Modern Evolution in Remedial Rights-The Declaratory Judgment, by Edson R. Sunderland; and Equitable Servitudes by George L. Clark.

We also gratefully acknowledge recent issues of Bench and Bar: The Scots Law Times; The MedicoLegal Journal (Herzog, 123 West 83rd Street, N.Y.); The Gazette Law Reports (Christchurch, N.Z.); The Scottish Law Review; Magistrates' Court Reports (Christchurch, N.Z.); New Jersey Law Journal; The Queensland Justice of the Peace; The Madras Law Times; The Madras Law Journal; The Calcutta Law Journal; The Madras Weekly Notes; The Criminal Law Reporter.

VOL. XXXVIII. C.L.T.-4a