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THE GREEN BAG

sharply with many of the contentions made by Mr. Clarke in the March-April number, noted in the May Green Bag. INSURANCE (See Damages). INTERNATIONAL LAW (Destruction of Neutral Vessels). " The Knight Commander Case," by Theodore S. Woolsey in the June Yale Law Journal (V. xvi, p. 566). A study of an incident of the Russo-Japanese War, from which the author lays down " as prob ably the usage of to-day,— with the sole excep tion of Russia, — that neutral ships which cannot be taken before a court for trial must be released. If military necessity demands they may be appropriated or destroyed subject to full payment. INTERNATIONAL LAW (Foreigners in Korea). " La Condition Juridique des Etrangers en Coree," by Francis Rey. Revue de Droit International Privt (V. iii, p. 359). Continuation of an exposition of the legal position of foreigners in Korea, to be further continued. JURISPRUDENCE. Dr. C. A. F. Lindorme contributes to the June Open Court (V. xxi, p. 345 ) a criticism of a system of justice which involves employment of partisan advo cates, under the title of " Law and Justice." There is little that is novel in the ideas he suggests though his manner of statement is entertaining. It is the usual attitude of those who have had no experience with the difficul ties of ascertaining and administering abstract justice. The editor in an article entitled " Justice, Its Nature and Actualization " in the same issue replies to the preceding article with a fairness and insight quite unusual in com ments by laymen on the methods of the bar. While he agrees that there is an eternal rule of justice, he realizes that we may be unable to formulate it, and although the law lags behind actual justice, " so long as life remains a struggle in a bodily world of conflicting interests " we cannot avoid an administration of justice which amounts to a settlement between contending parties, the views of which must be presented by argiynent to the tribunal that decides. JURISPRUDENCE (Interpretation of Laws). "Spurious Interpretation," by Roscoe Pound, in the June Columbia Law Review (V. vii,

p. 379), makes no direct allusion to any pres ent day political speeches, but a Yankee might guess it to have been suggested by them. The author deals with that form of judicial law-making under the guise of inter pretation which Austin has styled " spurious interpretation." "The object of genuine interpretation is to discover the rule which the law-maker intended to establish. . . . On the other hand, the object of spurious interpretation is to make, unmake, or remake, and not merely to discover. It puts a meaning into the text as a juggler puts coins, or what not, into a dummy's hair, to be pulled forth presently with an air of discovery. It is essentially a legislative, not a judicial process, made neces sary in formative periods by the paucity of principles, feebleness of legislation, and rigidity of rules characteristic of archaic law. . . . "No one will assert at present that the sepa ration of powers is part of the legal order of nature or that it is essential to liberty. We recognize to-day that it is a practical device, existing for practical ends; that it is only the principle of division of labor applied to gov ernment, and that it exists in modern states as a mere specialization, for the reason that any function will be better fulfilled by a special organ than by one charged with many func tions. It is often better that some other organ perform the special function in single instances than that it- go wholly unperformed. Just as in the organic body, when any one organ fails in its function others are pressed into service to do its work as well as they may, so in the super-organic body politic failure of one organ to do its whole work, or to do it well, puts pressure on the other organs to fill the gap. Hencei, while invasion of the prov ince of one department by another is by no means wholly evil, it is a sign either of back wardness in development or 'of organic disease. Rigid constitutions, difficult of amendment, particularly where, as in the case of the Four teenth Amendment they seek to impose the political or economic views of one time upon all times to come, are presenting to modern common -law courts the same problem which the rigid formalism of archaic procedure, and the terse obscurity of ancient codes, put before the jurists of antiquity. Cases must be