Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/863

 REVIEWS 847

Another instance of cogent appeal to enlightened conscience is the analysis of the results of a failure to give legal redress in the lawlessness of workingmen ; as in Colorado when the legislature refused relief after having sworn to give it by accepting office under the constitution.

No one has more clearly demonstrated the idea that the individual is secure in his rights only when all are protected by law ; and that no citizen can perform his duty without association of efforts. The anarchistic doctrine that government is a "necessary evil" is refuted by fact, and the lofty moral mission of law is enforced.

In view of the humiliating and discouraging decisions of some courts which set aside laws made to meet contemporary conditions by appeals to precedents drawn from ancient history, the author shows the necessity for introducing social science into law schools, although she does not mention this solution.

How can courts be enlightened and instructed concerning conditions as they exist? This is the burning question which confronts both the purchasers and the wage-earners in all those cases in which the health of the community is affected in ways less conspicuous than epidemic smallpox. How can the gradual, cumulative effect of working conditions, and of living condition?, upon the public health, be made obvious to the minds of the judges compos- ing the courts of last resort?

This is the last topic of the book, and no answer is attempted. So long as young lawyers are told by the highest and worthiest of their teachers that "the law library is the laboratory of the student," what can we expect afterward? Every beneficent change in legislation comes from a fresh study of social conditions and of social ends, and from some rejection of obsolete law to make room for a rule which fits the new facts. One can hardly escape from the conlusion that a lawyer who has not studied economics and sociology is very apt to become a public enemy ; and many a good judge would be hurtful if he did not get through newspapers and magazines a diluted kind of sociology which saves him from bondage to mere precedent. Re- formation does not come from a law library, which has its useful function in conservatism ; it comes from a complete mastery of the real world, and a moral judgment as to what ought to be and is not yet. The "moral philosophy" and "ethics" of the past genera- tion did something to deliver the legal profession from bondage to the letter of leather-covered texts ; but those social sciences which at once interpret the meaning, the values, the forces of national life.