Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/348

 EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT th'ere is much truth in these following para graphs : "What is the explanation of this unques tioned tendency to prolixity? In a word, it is due, I think, to the ease with which speech can be converted into type by modern methods. Human beings like to discourse. It requires no great mental or physical exertion to lean back in one's easy-chair and pour out floods of erudition into the ears of a stenographer, whose rapid pen catches and holds captive the inspired thoughts until they are embalmed forever in imperishable type. While the modern brief maker is lying back in ease the ancient brief-maker was bending over his desk and laboriously writing down each sentence. "I fully realize that any one who advises the abolition of dictation will be regarded as a hopeless reactionist, but I submit that its uses should be greatly curtailed in the prepara tion of opinions and briefs. This should be so, at least, until the habit of putting thought into the fewest possible words has been acquired by a careful apprenticeship with the pen. Undoubtedly it is more luxurious to talk to a human writing machine than to bend over the desk, pen in hand, but can there be a doubt as to which produces the best results? Is it not certain that the forty-page opinion and the four-hundred page brief would disappear, if in their preparation the pen were substituted for the mouth?" PROPERTY. " Impartible Estates as Family Property," by S. V., Madras Law Journal (V. xviii, p. i). PROPERTY. " Permissive Waste by Tenants for Life or Years," by G. S. Holmested, Canada Law Journal (V. xliv, p. 175). PROPERTY. (Rights of Surface Drainage). "Surface Water in Cities," by John R. Rood, Michigan Law Review (V. vi, p. 448). A valuable examination of the state of the law in this country on this important subject. Mr. Rood believes that no hard and fast rule can be applied to all cases in either city or country and is emphatic in his statement that different rule's are called for by the difference between rural and urban conditions. He disagrees, howTever, with Washburn's state ment that the natural right of drainage from

261

the upper to the lower land, where recognized, had no application to land in cities. " There is little or nothing to justify this statement," he says. " Wherever the civil law rule has been recognized, the right of surface drainage has been recognized, in the cities as much as in the country, due allowance being made for change of circumstances; and in states claim ing to follow the so-called common law rule, so far as they have admitted a right to drain age of surface water at all, as in ravines, the right has been protected as to city property as" much as in its application to rural land." The so-called common law or Massachusetts rule that there is no right of drainage for sur face waters outside of grant or prescription and that a man may improve his land as he sees fit without regard to whether he causes his surface water to stand in unusual quanti ties on other adjacent lands, or to pass over . it in greater quantities or in new direction he declares to be an error. This doctrine he declares, is inconsistent with the doctrine, nowhere denied and enforced in Massachusetts, that a man is liable for casting water from his roof so that it runs upon his neighbor's land, though the eaves do not overhang. Several courts have claimed to follow this socalled common law rule, but a number of them have nevertheless refused to follow it to its logical conclusion. Mr. Rood finds the law of the majority of the states and England to be the rule he ap proves, that the proprietor above is entitled to the natural flow of the surface water, but can do nothing to aggravate the burden on the proprietor below. PROPERTY (Remainders). " Vested and Contingent Remainder," by Albert M. Kales. Columbia Law Rcvieiu (V. viii, p. 245). Continuing Professor Kales' arguments in behalf of a new classification of remainders previously noticed. PUBLIC POLICY. " Should Trial by Jury ' be Abolished," by Hal. W. Greer, American Law Review (V. xlii, p. 192). Arguing the affirmative of the question. RAILROAD REGULATION (Valuation). "Railway Valuation — Is it a Panacea?" by Jackson E. Reynolds, Columbia Law Review (V. viii, p. 265). Declaring that "there seems to be a growing tendency in exalted quarters to regard the propaganda of