Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/505

 THE PUBLISHERS'

DEPARTMENT

"Constitutional Law a Live Science" Most important in our Constitutions today is the LIBERTIES OF THE PEOPLE, — the part most neglected by historians and commentators. Mr. Stimson, in his work on FEDERAL AND STATE CONSTITUTIONS, deals with the important problems now being discussed by the leading statesmen and politicians of the great political 'parties, as well as those confronting the legislatures and courts. .

THE INJUNCTION ORDER. The use of the injunction to quell disorder or con trol the action of large bodies of men, with the vig orous use of contempt process, stirs public opinion to-day. It was used in early times to quell disorder; but its use to control the actions of bodies of men in labor disputes may be said to date from 1868. Bearing in mind firmly the principle that the English law sounds only in damages, and that the notion of ordering or even forbidding any act (except under a criminal statute) is utterly foreign to its system; and the cardinal principle that no fact can be found without the intervention of the petit jury; we shall be able to understand both the historical reason and the present meaning of the objection of the American people to the injimctive powers of chancery and ex parte sentences for contempt. The objection to the abuse of the injunction is sound, and this in our country because it tends to make the courts no longer judicial but in effect part of the Executive branch of the government. This s the sense of the popular phrase " government by injunction." See Stimson, Book I, chap. IV.

THE RIGHT TO LABOR AND TRADE. The frequent enactment of acts against trusts, monopolies, or contracts in restraint of trade, both State and Federal, shows that our Legislatures, if not our Bench and Bar, must have substantially forgotten the body of the common law. For the broader understanding of the liberty right involves as well the liberty of life and person, the liberty to support life and family. The extent of this right is the matter most discussed to-day. There is probably no constitutional principle more often in vaded by modern statutes than is this. The constitutional freedom of labor and trade involves matters commonly invaded by modern statutes. See Stimson, Book I, chap. V.

THE REVIEWS. It is an entirely novel and very important exposi tion of the fundamental principles of our system of government. It throws a deal of light on problems which are confronting legislatures and courts, and about which every citizen, certainly every lawyer, must make up his mind. — The Sun Francisco Call. The work as a whole is not so much a discussion as a commentary and abstract, and derives great value from its contents, which are presented in an attractive, accessible and intelligible form. Of the research and scholarship that have gone into the making of the volume it is scarcely necessary to speak. No library of constitutional law can be regarded as up-to-date without this richly stored book of reference. — The Brooklinc, Mass., Chronicle.

This is a. different Tfrork from Mr. Stimson's lectures on Constitution, ' ' recently published by Scribner.

The (American