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THE GREEN BAG

private rights by treaty (with the possible exception of treaties of peace or treaties equivalent to those of peace), and that the courts cannot question acts of state (or, in the present state of the authorities, draw conse quences from them against the Crown). "The international law meant is that which at the time exists between states, without prejudice to the right and duty of the courts to assist in developing its acknowledged principles in the same manner in which they assist in developing the principles of the common law." JURISPRUDENCE. George H. Smith con tributes to the January American Law Review (V. xl, p. 58) an analysis " Of the Nature of Rights and of the Principles of Right or Juris prudence." He concludes his article as fol lows: "For the law — whether regarded as the Doctrine of Rights or of Actions — is in its essential nature a theory, and truly defined, a theory of right or justice. Nor if it be regarded as a science, can it be otherwise conceived; for there can be no science of accidental and heterogeneous things. Hence, reverting to our original definition, the necessity of the dis tinction between positive and instituted law, and the corresponding distinctions between law and quasi law, between actions and rights, between just and unjust actions, and between actionable and non-actionable, and real and quasi rights. Without this method, in the present condition of the law, even a tolerable mastery of it is impracticable; nor is it possible otherwise to reconcile the apparently hopeless antinomy presented by the co-exist ence in the law of its rational, with its acci dental and arbitrary elements. But with it, this antinomy — with the solution of which jurists and philosophers have been struggling from the beginning of history — disappears; and thus the law may be treated as a science, and its principles, and their general applica tions, expounded in the scientific form, and made cognoscible to the student; and thus the otherwise insurmountable obstacles now exist ing to an intelligent study of the law may be re moved. For under the view now so generally prevailing, that the law consists only of judicial precedents and statutes, it is demonstrable, not only that the very entrance to the law is barred to the student, but that the knowl

edge of the most learned lawyer, will, when compared with the ever growing mass, be found, at the end of each year, to be propor tionately less. Let us then, as students, rec ognize the great truth, received by tradition from the elders, that the law, or at least the substantive law, " is nothing else but reason," and as practitioners, let us (with Ashurst, J., in Pasley v. Freeman, 3 T. R. 62), " have so great a veneration for the law as to suppose that nothing can be law which is not founded in common sense or common honesty." Or if, with reluctance, we sometimes find something called law so established for the time being that we cannot disregard it, let us, emulating Galileo, still (at least to ourselves) assert the right, and regard the false principle only as quasi law; to which preforce we may be com pelled, for the time being, to give in our adhesion, but which, we may confidently hope, time will, sooner or later, rectify. Thus, and in no other way, may we remove the reproach to thejprofession, with which the judicious Burkein one of the passages cited in the title to this essay — felt himself constrained to qualify his magnificent but just eulogium on our art." JURISPRUDENCE (Constitutional Law). Hon. Hannis Taylor, in the February North American Review (V. 182, p. 204) writes of the "Elasticity of Written Constitutions." The views he expresses are in accord with those in his article on " Legitimate Functions of Judgemade Law " in our October number. LANDLORD AND TENANT. " Bengal Ten ancy Act " by Sarat Chandra Banerjie, Cal cutta Law Journal, (V. i, pp. 79 n, 91 n, and V. ii, pp. i n, n n). LEGISLATION. " Digests of Governors' Messages, 1905, being Bulletin 101 of the New York State Library," edited by Robert H. Whitten, New York State Education Depart ment, Albany, 1906. LEGISLATION. In the February Columbia Law Review (V. vi, p. 102), Alfred C. Cox criticises our " Over-production of Law." He collects startling statistics as to the annual volume of statutes and reports and makes unfavorable comparison with that of the United Kingdom. He finds no excuse for our much larger proportional volume of new law. "Our complex system of government may, of course, account for a part of our amazing