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Rh and government regulation are continually bringing new human activities within the scope of law. Laymen will probably always need legal advice before entering upon litigation or important transactions, but that is an entirely different question. What I object to, is that the general principles of law, although a predominant element in American life, should remain esoteric mysteries to the man in the street. It is not so in other countries. The demi-mondaines in Balzac can quote the Code Napoléon in jest.

Good exposition of legal fundamentals to the public brings much of value besides the gratification of curiosity. Laymen possess the ultimate control over law-making through the election of legislators who enact statutes and fix judicial salaries; in most States the judges themselves are elected. Ignorance of the judicial task causes a superstition that any honest and earnest politician, once he is on the bench, will become a perfect automatic reasoning machine. Often enough this false reverence is succeeded by the disillusioned belief that every judge is the creature of bias and corruption. If the voters realized the difficult nature of a judge's work, they would be more anxious to put experts on the bench, give them more power, and pay them salaries that would not render the loss of a successful practice an impossible sacrifice for most lawyers. Moreover, if the people could be shown the really defective portions of the existing law, they would give hearty support to law reformers, who now labour in a sort of emotional vacuum for lack of public interest in their aims. A century ago the wide circulation of Bentham's writings among intelligent laymen stimulated the sweeping improvements of English law by the reformed Parliament.

Fortunately, a few books on law for American citizens have been written during recent years. E. V. Abbot's Justice and the Modern Law discusses general problems, and such particular aspects as rate regulation and anti-trust regulation. Dean Stone of Columbia in Law and Its Administration treats some of the fundamental notions which underlie our legal system. Problems of Law by Dean Wigmore of Northwestern University presents special questions of the evolution and mechanism of law. The Reform of Legal Procedure by Moorfield Storey tells how lawyers hope to remedy the law's delays. Other helpful books are Reginald H. Smith's Justice and the Poor, Frederic R. Coudert's Certainty and Justice, and the new edition of the best work on jurisprudence in