Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/1022

986 986 HARVARD LAW REVIEW scholar; for the volume is mostly taken up with the niceties of the ancient land law, now qviite obsolete. But for the historian of life the volume is full of interest. He shall see the Prior building a wall across the churchyard; the parishioners nursing their wrath for seven years and then throwing it down. He shall see a Prior and a Prioress contending for tithes of wheat cut on the Prioress' land. He shall hear oath for oath pass between bench and bar: "Bereford, C. J. Nomde dieu you will find it in the law of England. If . . . Margery had entered . . . would Alan's sister . . . have recovered? No. ScROPE. Nom de dieu, sir, no more could Margery." And he shall see case after weary case where one party or the other, claiming an inheritance, was alleged to have been bom before marriage. The Introduction touches on several interesting matters, but chiefly on the origin of attorneys, and the difference between them and responders, bailiffs, and essoiners. The meaning of "demi seal" or "pes sigUli," and the reasons for using the foot of the seal only, are considered, and the word "godhynch" is left unexplained. The entire Introduction shows Mr. Bolland's usual industry and acumen. Joseph H. Beale. Spirit of the Courts. By Thomas W. Shelton. Baltimore: John Murphy Company. " 1918. pp. xxxvii, 264. To interest the general public in specific questions of procedural law reform is no easy task. It is not that the public is not interested in the general situ- ation. When the stage hero is convicted of a crime on perjured testimony or because his witnesses were kidnaped by the viUain, and he exclaims, "It may be law but it isn't justice," he receives a rapturous response from the audience to whom the playwright has already shown the hero's innocence. But these people in the audience have a grievance, a real grievance, although they do not know exactly what it is. There are miscarriages of justice, not only miscarriages which are inevitable in any legal system, but also miscarriages which can be and ought to be avoided. These people have a right to demand of the legal profession that it find the proper remedies. It may happen, however, that although the lawyers offer a remedy, they have not the power to effect it Statutes may have to be enacted, and for their enactment the interest and aid of the general public may be necessary. This aid will not be forthcoming unless the public is instructed, not merely in the need for a remedy (that they know all too well) but also in the nature of the remedy offered. Mr. Shelton, as Chair- man of the Committee of the American Bar Association on Uniform Judicial Procedure has for years done excellent work in the cause of procedural reform. His book is the result of a series of lectures in which he has attempted to con- vince the public that a path out of our present difficulties lies in the enactment of a federal statute conferring upon the Supreme Court of the United States power to regulate by rule of court procedure in the federal courts, and of state statutes conferring similar powers upon the state courts which presumably would adopt ndes based upon the federal model. That he is right seems clear to a majority of lawyers interested in the cause of procedural reform. Whether he has succeeded in so presenting his case as to interest and instruct the public is more doubtful. The presentation of his ideas is not clean cut. The ideas are often buried beneath a mass of discursive rhetoric which doubtless sounded better than it reads. But he brings great enthusiasm to a great cause, and all those who have at heart the just and effective administration of the law should join in giving him aid and comfort. A.W.S.