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The Green Bag

erosity of disposition particularly marked in his relations with counsel. In the Court of Criminal Appeal, which began its sittings under his presidency, he created, as his successor has happily said, out of the dry bones of an Act of Parliament a great institution. It fell to his province to develop the policy of a court the function of which was but vaguely outlined in the statute establish ing it. He has worked out a wise, moderate policy for this tribunal, such as to interfere neither too little nor too much with the judgments brought before it for review. The cardinal features of this policy may be said to be to sustain verdicts reasonably found on evidence properly admitted, not to interfere with the sentence passed unless the judge has gone wrong in principle and within these limits to standardize sentences as far as possible, and not to quash a ver dict for mere technical error in instruc tions unless they might have led the jury astray. Sir John Simon, K.C., who succeeds Sir Rufus Isaacs as Attorney-General, is a man of remarkable intellectual force, which has been displayed in Parliament as well as at the bar, where he has gone

forward rapidly in only fourteen years of practice. He is only forty years old, and such phrases are written of him as that his rapid promotion has been "certainly unique in modern times," and that he "possesses a capacious and cultured mind and a strong and attrac tive personality." Mr. Stanley Owen Buckmaster, K.C., M.P., becomes Solicitor-General. He has won a great reputation at the Chancery bar, and is considered an effective speaker in Parliament. Lord Justice Hamilton has been promoted to the office of Lord of Appeal, from his position at the head of the Scottish judiciary. Lord Dunedin has also become a Lord of Appeal. These two appointments increase the strength of the House of Lords and of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, having come about under the provisions of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act looking to the appointment of two additional Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. Mr. Justice Phillimore has been ad vanced from the King's Bench Division to the position of a Lord Justice, and his learning will find a new field for its exercise in the Court of Appeal.

Mechanics of Codification OF THE CODE By COMMITTEE W. L. Goldsborough OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

THE suggestions contained herein were formulated and submitted to the "powers that be" in the Philip pines in 1909-1910, when a committee was organizing and entering upon the work of revising the existing codes and laws of the Islands and preparing new codes "in accordance with modern prin

ciples of the science of law."1 Four years' experience as a member of that committee have confirmed the writer's first conclusions as to the number of codes which should go to make up a complete system, and as to the plan of 'Act 1941 of the Philippine Legislature.