Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 25.pdf/153

 140

The Green Bag

Recall of Judicial Decisions. "The Recall of Judicial Decisions." By Daniel W. Baker. 1 Georgetown Law Journal no. 2, p. 1 (Jan.). "Instead of amendments which merely create new litigation, raise new questions of constitu tional law, is it not common sense, is it not reason able, to have amendments that go direct to the heart of the matter, and amendments that will destroy and recall the decisions of courts without having to await for a further decision of a court? Is there anything revolutionary in this? Is it not a plain, reasonable proposition?" Slander of Property. See Disparagement of Property. Social Legislation. "The Zeitgeist and the Judiciary." By Felix Frankfurter. Survey, v. 29, p. 542 (Jan. 25). "One ventures the suggestion that it is demon strable, as Professor Roscoe Pound has shown, that one of the prime factors contributing to the current dissatisfaction is the fact that judges have thwarted legislative efforts at just such readjustment, not because of any coercion of the constitution, but by reason of their constitutional conservatism. . . . The courts should be a re straining but not a hampering force. Doubtless grave mistakes in legislation will thus go unchal lenged through the courts, but legislation is essen tially empirical, experimental, and the constitu tion was not intended to limit this field of experimentation. Think of the gain of having experience demonstrate the fallacy of a law after the supreme court had sustained its constitu tionality! For, as a wise man has truly said, to fail and learn by failure is one of the sacred rights of a democracy." "The Constitution, The Court and The People." By Ralph W. Breckenridge. 22 Yale Law Journal 181 (Jan.). Address delivered last November before the California State Bar Association.

"I have referred to the niggardliness of the people toward the judiciary. One cause of the delays experienced by litigants, is that in the centers of population, there are not enough judges to do the business of the courts with rea sonable dispatch, and nearly every court of last resort in the United States has a congested docket. . . . Moreover, the salaries of the judges are so absurdly and pathetically inade quate as to create surprise that the public has been able to command so much high class judi cial talent for the pay that has been grudgingly given." See Due Process of Law, Professional Standards. Wills. "Striking Words Out of a Will." By Roland Gray. 26 HarvardLaw Review2l2 (Jan.). "Courts of equity have no power to rectify or reform wills, on account of mistake, similar to that exercised by those courts in the case of deeds. So-called reformation or correction of mistakes in wills, without the aid of extrinsic evidence of intention, by disregarding or imply ing terms, is an entirely different process, being purely a matter of construction; nor has a court of equity greater power in that respect than a court of law. . . . "If a court of equity cannot reform a will by adding words to it, much less can a court of pro bate do so, which is a court of law, whose office is to determine what instrument, if any, the de ceased executed as his will." Workmen's Compensation. "The Law of Procedure Under the Illinois Workingmen's Compensation Act." By David K. Tone. 7 Illi nois Law Review 344 (Jan.). "We know of no place where the litigant will encounter a greater number of perplexing legal problems, than when he attempts to grope his way through the maze of uncertainties and im perfections that compose the law of procedure in the act under consideration."

Latest Important Cases Insurance. Parties to a Burglary Insurance Contract may Stipulate that it Shall Apply only if there are Physical Evidences of the Commission of Burglary. N. Y. A policy of burglary insurance contained a clause providing that the insurer should not be liable "unless there are visible marks upon the premises of actual force and violence used in making entry into the said premises or exit therefrom." Two persons gained access to a warehouse just after the door had been un locked in the morning, and threatening two em ployees with pistols took away a quantity of silks. In Rosenthal v. American Bonding Com

pany, the New York Court of Appeals held Dec. 31 that there was no liability on the part of the insurer. The provision quoted contra venes no principle of public policy, and its mean ing, said the Court (Hiscock, J.), is plain. "The only inquiry can be whether the parties have assented to the incorporation in their agreement of a provision which clearly calls for such proofs of their alleged loss which the plaintiffs have not furnished. We think they have. We believe that the requirement that the violence and force employed in effecting a burglarious entry into premises must produce 'visible marks upon the premises' thus entered is plain beyond the need