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The Green Bag

Professor J. H. Beale, Jr., of Harvard Law School has in preparation a collection of "Cases on Municipal Corporations." I The land title registration law, or Torrens system, went into operation in New York state February 1. The law sets apart a special Land Term of the Supreme Court for hearing land registration cases, and provides for the qualification of lawyers, conveyancers, and title companies, as examiners of titles. Whenever such an examiner lays before the court proper evidence of the validity of a title, the court will order the title registered unless at the time appointed for the hearing claimants against the title appear and estab lish their claims. The national House of Representatives passed the Tirrell bill Feb. 6 making important changes in the National Bankruptcy Act, after a motion to repeal the Act altogether had been defeated by the comparatively close vote of 111 to 182. The bill as it goes to the Senate fixes the compensation of receivers definitely so as to prevent abuses in par ticular cases. To facilitate the collection of assets in remoter districts ancillary jurisdiction is conferred upon all district courts. The exact scope of the law is set forth clearly in one paragraph. Trustees get furtherpowers as the representatives of the creditors. Further provisions are made against settlements giv ing preference to any creditor or set of creditors.

The penal code of federal criminal law was enacted March 4 by the adoption in both houses of Congress of the conference report on the bill drafted by a joint commission. The revision defines more clearly the jurisdiction of the federal courts in cases coming within admiralty law; it enlarges the statutes so as to reach new methods of committing crime and the extension of American territory; it prohibits not only "obscene literature" but filthy literature" from the mails; it eliminates some of the so-called "Klu-Klux" laws. The code is referred to on page 116 of this number of the Green Bag. Speaking of the censorship of British plays, apropos of the prohibition of any burlesque upon the popular success "An Englishman's House," wherein the dangers of invasion are glowingly represented, the London Law Journal says that it might be well to attach the censorship to the Home Office, rather than to the office of Lord Chamberlain, so that a cabinet minister might become responsible for its proper working, or to abolish the posi tion altogether. "When a play is blasphemous, seditious, or indecent, the persons concerned in its representation are indictable at Common Law, and the Executive could set the police in motion on a proper occasion. The present system creates intermittently a sense of injus tice, which would not arise if the stage, like the Press, were subject only to the ordinary law; or if, at least, some right of appeal were given from the present arbitrary discretion of the Censor."