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The Green Bag

transaction had been one at law. And even executory contracts between individuals which may be made in writin are now frequently made by deed—a furt er evidence of the intense conservatism of men who seem never to forget the sanctity which once attached to a practice followed by their ancestors." “The Continuity of Case Law." By M. C. Klingelsmith. 58 Univ. of Pa. Law Review 399 (Apr.).

“The modern lawyer may not know a word of old French; he may never have opened a Year Book; he may not be able to trace a citation through the mazes of an old abridg ment; he may not care for the old law, but may care only for ‘the practical side’ of the law, as he calls it, and the latest decision fresh

from the judicial n. Not less is he depend ent upon the ol er law. He can no more get away from it than he can get away from past history, lpast development in all the pther surroun ings and conditions of his 1 e. .. . ' “The thoughtful lawyer, the skillful prac tioner, the student of the law, all need, and

should demand, that in this latter day, this day of discovery and enterprise and initia trve in all other things, they should have set

before them not only a new edition of the already printed Year Books, but that all the unprinted Year Books should be 'ven to them, in some such form as that m which Mr. Maitland gave to the world his transla tion of that portion of the Maynard, or oldest of the Year Books, which he was able to

complete before his death.” “The Exclusion of Attorneys from the Inns of Court." By Hugh H. L. Bellot. 26 Law Quarterly Review‘ 137 (Apr.). “It has been too often assumed that attor neys and solicitors were ﬁnally excluded from the Inns of Court in the middle of the six teenth century. An examination, however, of_the records of the four Inns will show that this assumption is erroneous and that these ractitioners of the law continued to be mem rs of the greater Houses until the end of the eighteenth century." See Torts. Legal literature. "The Misdating of the Statute of Merton in Bracton." By George E. Woodbine, of Yale University. 26 Law Quarterly Review 151 (Apr.). ‘The writer is of the o inion that Bracton wrote his treatise in t e type of writing known as court hand, and that the careless ness of copyists has had a great deal to do with the errors of date if it does not explain all of them. Legal Plagiu'ilm. Scott's "Hague Confer ences of 1899 and 1907." 10 Columbia Law Review 374 (Apr.). The March number of this Review con tained a book notice by Professor 1. P. Cham berlain of the University of California charg mg Dr. James Brown Scott with making

improper use of the text of Merl c in his recent work on the Hague con erenccs (see 22 Green Bag 293). The Columbia Law Re view prints a vigorous editorial disavowal of this accusation, and publishes a favorable comment by Dean George W. Kirehwey of Columbia Law School on the work in ques tion. To quote Dean Kirchwey:—“It would be only too easy to retort on the critic by calling attention to the ingenious way in which he has arranged his evidence, selecting his quotations from separate and distinct paragraphs of the original and sup ressing intervening passages in which Dr. tt refers to the authorities whom he is paraphrasing or quoting. But this would be to be as unfair to our reviewer as he has been to his author and no more so. The truth is that Dr. Scott's work, along with

abundant evidence of an anxious desire to 've full credit for the material of which he s rightfully made use, shows instances of carelessness in this regard in a composition which bears other evidences of haste. But to read plagiarism into these instances is the very abnegation of criticism." Legislation. “The Referendum and its Critics." By A. V. Dicey. Quarterly Review, v. 212, no. 423, p. 538 (Apr.). Prof. Dicey here makes a vigorous and even polemical defense of the referendum. with reference to conditions in English poli tics. ' “From a general election, it is said, you may in substance, though not in so many words, obtain the expression of the nation 5 will ‘on the leadin

measures submitted, or

to be submitted, y a government to the consideration of the country. This conten tion has one grave defect: it does not corre spond with the facts of English public life. . _. “As the party system is now worked in England, a general election lays before the electorate a huge number of incongruous and confused issues on the whole of which it is absolutely impossible for the ablest and most temperate of electors to give a satisfactory reply; for note in passing that the_voter has practically no other means of giving a ver dict on the issues which he is supposedto determine than the very awkward and in direct one of voting for either a supporter or an opponent of the overnment. ut the last point aside and et us consider for a moment a few amon the numerous questions raised at the genera election of anuary and February last. . . . The man a ut to give a vote was in reality in a position as grotesque as would be the situation of a juryman who. being called upon to ﬁnd a ‘given prisoner ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty,’ was tol by the Judge at one moment that the man in the dock was being

tried

for

murder,

and

at

another

moment that he was being tried for lar cen. . . . “lf once Englishmen adopt, not onl Referendum, but also the s irit in whi

the the

Referendum is worked in witzerland, some other changes of considerable beneﬁt to