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The Green Bag

body. Those who know well its practice will rather believe that no other legislature of its size, as to membership and quorum, has a system equaling it in fairness, liberality and efficiency. On the great questions of revenue and appropriations, which are the first ques tions among all free peoples, its system is famous for the unrivaled manner in which it concentrates searching and intelligent de liberation on every item, without discrimina tion between members as to party or length of service. And its more formal debates are regulated with equal liberality and fairness. The statement that no member speaks with out securing prior consent of the Speaker has hardly a shred of truth by which to hang. The Speaker recognizes for debate, it is true, and there is no appeal from his recognition because the House cannot afford time for such a process; but the Speaker recognizes, in the great majority of instances, not arbitrarily, but according to certain usages which have the force of rules. And these usages secure recognitions to those members who, by the arrangement of committees and business, are presumably best informed on the subject, for and against the pending proposition. Of course every egotist in the House may not intrude himself into the first place in every debate." Literature. "The Writings of Sir Edward Coke." By John Marshall Gest. 18 Yale Law Journal 504 (May). "He was the oracle and ornament of the common law; a lawyer of prodigious learning, untiring industry and singular acumen, with an accurate knowledge of human nature. He was a judge of perfect purity, a patriotic and independent statesman and a man of upright life; and, to bring us to the subject of this paper, his writings have had more influence upon the law than those of any other law writer—certainly in England—who ever lived. And yet there are some who, while admitting his learning, would deny every other claim just made for him. It is indeed hard to estimate correctly even after three centuries, those mighty men who then occupied the centre of the stage. Everyone who reads the fascinating Elizabethan story becomes insen sibly a Baconian or a Cokian, a partisan of one or the other of those wonderful men." Medical Jurisprudence. See Evidence. Mines. "Placer Mining Law in Alaska." By Thomas R. Shepard. 18 Yale Law Journal 533 (May). "To the lack of statutory regulation of the subject-matter is largely due, as we shall see, the excessive litigation over titles to mining claims, which has made the uncertainty of Alaskan investments a reproach and has operated as a serious drag upon the energy of its mining enterprise. Hence, this discus sion of the subject must inevitably take on, to some extent, the aspect of a criticism of the non-action of Congress."

Poverty. "The Abolition of Poverty." By Prof. J. Laurence Laughlin. Scribner's, v. 45, p. 752 (June). "If we are able to reach a steadily increas ing number of the willing poor by means of our economic methods and are able to get them moving towards permanent self-main tenance, we shall have done all that is humanly possible." "The Causes of Unemployment." By H. Stanley Jevons. Contemporary Review, v. 95, p. 548 (May). "At present we spend about fifteen and a half millions sterling per annum on education, and sixty millions on the army and navy. We may perhaps rest satisfied when we have come to spend altogether on education as much as we now spend upon defense." Practice. "The Law as a Profession for Women." By G. Flos. Greig. 6 Common wealth Law Review (of Australia) 145 (MarApr.). The writer is the first woman barrister and solicitor to practise in the courts of Australia. "Are women capable of performing legal work?" she asks. "Well, why not? Person ally I have never heard one rational reason against it, though I have listened to heaps of twaddle." Probation. "A Court That Prevents Crimi nals." By Judge McKenzie Cleland. World's Work, v. 18, p. 11689 (June). "I believe the only way to deal with acci dental offenders, whether juvenile or adult, is to place them op probation during good be havior, upon their promise to obey the law and provide for their families—suspending over them meantime the maximum penalty of the law, and requiring them to serve it out on their failure to make good'. During a period of thirteen months, I released on these conditions nearly 1,300 men and women, of whom more than 1,100, or ninety-two per cent became law-abiding and industrious citizens. While on probation, they were required to report to me at night sessions of the court held once a fortnight, and about 400 business men assisted as volunteer parole officers in helping them to reform. This plan received strong support from the police department, which declared that it had reduced crime in the district fifty per cent." Procedure. "Oral Instructions to Juries." Editorial by R. P. [Roscoe Pound] in 4 Illi nois Law Review 140 (June). Referring to a communication written by Andrew R. Sheriff of Chicago, in the same issue (p. 144), in favor of written instructions to juries, an opinion is editorially expressed tending to sustain Mr. Gilbert's bill before the Illinois Legislature providing for an oral charge. "The grounds on which written instruc tions are advocated today are (1) that written