Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/483

 370

THE GREEN BAG

CURRENT LEGAL LITERATURE Thit department is dtsigntd to call attention to the articles in all the leading legal periodicals of the preceding month and to new law books sent us for review

Conducted by WILLIAM C. GRAY, of Fall River, Mass.

ADMIRALTY. " Salvage Awards," by A. R. Kennedy, Law Magazine and Review (V. xxxiii, p. 301). Interesting discussion of some of the principles followed by English judges in assessing salvage awards, the amount being entirely dependent upon the exercise of judicial discretion. BIOGRAPHY. The third volume of Great American Lawyers, edited by Wm. Draper Lewis, The John C. Winston Co., Phildelphia, 1908, deals chiefly with those whodeveloped the common law in our State courts in the first half of the last century, though some of the subjects such as Clayton and Webster are more especially notedas constitutional lawyers, and Judge Story's fame must rest in part on his decisions under the Constitution. Wheaton is chiefly famous as an international lawyer, and Wheaton, Cranch, and Blackford represent the early reporters of decision. The best written of these essays is that on Judge Shaw by Joseph Henry Beale, Jr., which contains many delightfully satirical touches. The most important subject in this volume is Joseph Story, of whom Judge Schofield says: " Tried by the quantity, quality, and variety of his legal work, and by the influence which it has exerted and is still exerting upon the law, he is the foremost jurist America has produced." The biographies in this volume are as follows: Jeremiah Mason, by John Chipman Gray; William Gaston, by Henry G. Connor; William Cranch, by Alexander Burton llagner; Joseph Story, by William Schofield; Isaac Blackford, by William WheelerThornton; William Harper, by William Hugins Brawley; Henry Wheaton, by James Brown Scott; Daniel Webster, by Everett Pepperrell Wheeler; Peter Hitchcock,, by Willis Seymour Metcalf; John Bannister Gibson, by Samuel Dreher Matlack; John Middleton Clayton, by William Elbert Wright; Lemuel Shaw, by Joseph Henry Beale, Jr.; Roger Sherman Baldwin, by Simeon Eben Baldwin; Rufus Choate, by Joseph Hodges Choate.

CARRIERS. " Duties of Common Carriers Transporting Explosives," by Joseph Riddell, American Lawyer (V. xvi, p. 218). CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. " Powers of the American People, Congress, President, and Courts, accordingto Evolution of Constitutional Construction," by Masuji Miyakawa. The Wilkins Sheiry Co., Washington, 1906. This book is a summary of the powers of the American people and of the legislative, execu tive, and judicial branches of our government, which, apart from any extraordinary intrinsic merit, at once invites attention from the fact, appearing on its title-page, that it emanates from the pen of " the first Japanese attorney ever admitted to the American bar." So con sidered it must be recognized as a notable achievement by an author whose familiarity with our language and ideas is very evidently the result of studious acquirement. He has succeeded in sufficiently Americanizing himself to produce a good summary of the particular phases of constitutional law of which he treats; but as a result of his facility in adapting himself his book loses much that it might otherwise have gained from the fact of its alien author ship. The interest expected to attach to a bird's-eye view of American institutions from the outside is missing, and there is a sense of disappointment in finding, instead of a Japanese picture of our Constitution and government, a treatise not essentially differing from others by our own writers on the same topics. Considered, however, as its author evidently meant it to be considered, on its merits as a domestic production, it contains a thorough, if somewhat elementary, discussion of the distribution of gavernmental power; and in the article dealing with Congress especially, is clear and complete. In an appendix there is a terse and at the same time comprehensive sketch of the development of republican principles, culminating in the adoption of the national Constitutional, in which there are