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THE GREEN BAG

CURRENT

LEGAL

LITERATURE

This department is designed to call attention to the articles in all the leading legalperiodicals of the preceding month and to new law books sent usfor review. Conducted by William C. Gray, of Fall River, Mass. Echoes of Secretary Root's speech about the power of the national government are ringing through the legal magazines. Articles on constitutional law are noted this month in unusual number, and several of them are of unusual merit. It seems fair to say that the tendency is toward the recognition of the force of the secretary's contentions, even if the writers regard them as more inevitable than desirable. A spirited defense of the practice of taking contingent fees where clients are poor, appearing in the Yale Law Journal, presents a different view than usually finds expression in the magazines. The articles of Professor Brannan and Messrs. Cunningham and Warren in the Harvard Law Review are clear dis cussions of law points of importance to a practicing lawyer. ADMINISTRATIVE LAW. " To What Ex tent have Rules and Regulations of the Fed eral Departments the Force of Law? " by Morris M. Cohn, in the May-June American Law Review (V. xli, p. 343), summarizes the subject in the following manner: "The executive department of the federal government, through the President and the heads of departments, has an inherent right to issue regulations bearing upon matters com mitted to it by the Constitution; but the extent of this power has not been defined. It has been said that this exercise of power cannot conflict with acts of Congress; which means that where Congress are acting within their constitutional powers, their acts will prevail. Subordinates, and persons who invoke the benefits of such regulations, so promulgated within constitutional limits, cannot question them. And where the action is that of the President, through the head of the proper department, in relation to a political matter committed to him by the Constitution, it will be binding upon all. But it does not follow that every officer, in every branch of the government, is under the exclusive direction of the President. And the right to promulgate rules and regulations, to have the force of laws, is not conceded to others than heads of departments, where an act of Congress does not so provide. Where the regulation of the head of a department, or approved by the head of a department, is under an act of Con gress, it cannot conflict therewith, nor add anything thereto by creating new offenses, nor

additional civil liability nor additional con ditions not mentioned therein. But regula tions have been sustained where they were in aid of the acts under which they were issued. However, where Congress indicated by an act passed to cover omissions in a previous act that there was no intention on their part to leave the matter to the regulation of the commissioner of internal revenue, even though they had conferred power upon him in general terms to create regulations upon the subject, the courts will not enforce such regulations when they concern manufacturers and deal ers, so as to impose penalties denounced by act of Congress for failure to observe the law. Nevertheless, general provisions in an act of Congress will sometimes justify a regulation which has the traditions of the department and of legislation, and the inherent power of the head of a department, to sustain it. The courts take judicial notice of those rules and regulations of the departments that have the force and effect of laws." BANKRUPTCY. " The Law and Practice of Bankruptcy under the New York Bank ruptcy Act of 1898," by William Miller Collier, 6th edition by Frank B. Gilbert, Matthew Bender &. Co., Albany, 1907. The rapid accumulation of decisions upon this important subject makes necessary fre quent renewal of treatises which endeavor to be exhaustive. Six hundred cases have been decided in the two' years since the. 5th edition was published and many of these settled questions of importance. This has required