BOOK REVIEWS

TRADE ASSOCIATION ACTIVITIES AND THE LAW

Franklin D. Jones, of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, has written a very valuable treatise on the above subject, comprising 360 pages, cloth bound. It is published by McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 370 Seventh Avenue, New York City. Price, $4.00.

This book is a comprehensive summary of the experiences of our Na itonal Trade Associations. Every form of their activities is discussed from the viewpoint of business benefits and disadvantages. Methods of organi

zation and financing and the law applicable thereto are set forth with great clarity. The appendices include copies of all the important legislation which may be considered as bearing upon trade association activities. This includes Sherman, Clayton, Webb, and other acts. Summary is presented showing that great group of unlawful activities are to be found throughout the nation. As a means of guidance for association officials and members, this work will prove undoubtedly of great benefit.

THE PROBLEM OF PROOF

By Albert S. Osborn, Author of "Questioned Documents." Introduction by Professor John Henry Wigmore, Author of "Wigmore on Evidence." New York and Albany. Matthew Bender & Company, Incorporated.

1922.

The learned author of "Questioned Documents" has furnished the legal profession a book of the greatest value and interest. It is more than a mere discussion of technical questions. The volume is a worthy successor of "Questioned Documents" and as Professor Wigmore well says in the introduction: "There is wisdom on every page." A book whose ripe wisdom ranges over a wide scope of the practitioner's field.

The author states that the main purpose of the book is to help the lawyer who has a case to try in which it becomes necessary to prove the facts relating to a disputed document.

If there is a single feature of the law governing upon these subjects which Professor Osborn has failed to thoroughly cover, our reading of the work has overlooked it. It is invaluable to the practitioner, well written, and filled with facts rather than flights of fancy. This work is worthy of the careful consideration and observation of the legal fraternity throughout the world.

Professor Osborn not only discusses the subject of proof of the facts and persuasion in the courts of law, but enters into short treatises upon “Argument" and "Cross-examination," upon the "Atmosphere of a Trial" and "Court Rooms." The statements as to the latter ought to be read by every architect who plans a court house, just as the others ought to be read by every lawyer, no matter what is his age or experience. The chapter on "Advocacy" is admirable and worthy of engraftment in every work on legal ethics.

THE LIFE OF JOHN MARSHALL By Albert J. Beveridge. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Mass. Four volumes, octavo, illustrated, cloth binding.

The virile, attractive, splendid personality of John Marshall, one of the greatest figures in American history and chief founder of our Government, has been well told by ex-Senator Albert J. Beveridge. The author has done more than depict the life story of one of the grandest men in American history: he has told in simple yet in burning language the history of this Nation in the making. The great actors in the drama move through the pages of four volumes like real men. The corridors of time have been enriched by the pen pictures of the author of John Marshall, sturdy. brilliant and resourceful.

The reader sees how the influences of his time made Marshall and how Marshall helped make the history of his country. He sees how Marshall, as a soldier of Washington, first began to realize the need of a strong govern

ment; how this impression grew upon him with later events; how he fought for the ratification of the Constitution as the only means of accomplishing this purpose; and how he finally made those great interpretations of the Consu¬ tution upon which his fame chiefly rests.

The Life of Marshall takes its place at once among the comparatively few classics of American history. That it has meant tremendous soul-trying labor is evident on its face. Mr. Beveridge was ideally fitted for the task. His legal training, his long career in the public service furnishing him with the sidelights on mer and motives and measures beyond the reach of the his. torians of the closet, together with his profound sympathy with the fight that Marshall made to breathe vitality and virility into the Constitution, all combined to make him the ideal biographer of the great Chief Justice.

The magnitude and importance of this work easily places it in first place. Not only is the matter dealt with of prime interest at a time when the Constitution of the United States is often threatened by a radicalism opposed to all sanity, but the style of the author, his dramatic manner of presenting historical events, holds the reader's attention from start to finish.

The great judicial decisions through which our American institutions were molded and which in a way altered our entire history are presented with a fullness of knowledge of their entire historical background, which lends a dramatic brilliance to the erudition of a highly important narrative.

No American lawyer who pretends to maintain a private library can afford to be without these books, and the same is true of every layman own. ing such a library who cares to be thoroughly informed concerning one of the greatest men this country has ever produced.

“CLASSIFICATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF HANDWRITING," By C. D. Lee and R. A. Abbey, of the Berkeley, California, Police Department, published by D. Appleton and Company, New York and London, 116 pages, cloth bound.

The purpose of this little work is to provide an orderly means for the filing of specimens of handwriting, much in the same manner as is done with finger prints.

It is assumed that in everyone's handwriting certain definite and fixed characteristics exist, which serve to establish the writer's identity.

Years ago, Sir E. R. Henry, Commissioner of Police of London, and later Dr. Hans Schneickert of the Metropolitan Police of Berlin, each devised methods or systems adapted to the English and German script classification, being based upon a crime category and graphic characteristics. Messrs. Lee and Abbey, by the present system advanced, dispose of the crime category so that a single search of the files will be sufficient to establish whether or not a duplicate exists.

A very large amount of research work must have been necessary Ref erence by the writers to such well known authorities as "Osborn's Questioned Documents," "Ames on Forgery," "Hagan's Disputed Handwriting," "Blackburn, Douglas, Caddell, and Warthman on The Detection of Forgery," shows the vast amount of study necessary in the preparation of this work. The work will be found very valuable and undoubtedly will come into use, both upon the part of handwriting experts and the police authorities of the larger cities.

MINIMIZING TAXES

John H. Sears of the New York bar has written a very valuable work on the above subject. It is published and for sale by the Vernon Law Book Company of Kansas City, Missouri; 706 pages, buckram bound.

In these days of tax liability to the Federal Government and State, when complex and difficult questions confront the business man on every hand, we find a treatise of this kind of great interest. Mr. Sears is a law writer of repute, his work on Trust Estates is a standard and recognized authority. In over 700 pages the author argues that a Government cannot tax beyond productivity. The tendency of the text is to adjust the taxing forces to the load to be carried so that a pratcical and may be subserved and the terrors of taxation be lessened.

PERSONAL SKETCH

JUDGE HARRY J. DINGEMAN

Honorable Harry J. Dingeman, judge of the third judicial circuit of Michigan, at Detroit, and presiding judge of the circuit jurists of that state, whose portrait appears as the frontispiece of this issue of THE LAWYER AND BANKER, is a living example of what ambition, combined with ability, can accomplish. Judge Dingeman completes his first term on the bench July fourth next and is this spring seeking re-election. That he will be returned by an overwhelming majority is an acknowledged fact. During his comparatively short judicial career he has acquired an enviable reputation not only as a judge of well known unimpeachable character, but beyond question or dispute as one of the most distinguished jurists in the state of Michigan today. Judge Dingeman is by nature of a modest disposition, leaving it to his friends and associates to discover and sing his praises. That they have done so is evidenced by the fact that for the years 1921 to the current year inclusive he has been selected by the circuit judges of Michigan to preside over their deliberations, to assign them to the several districts, and in general to be their guide, philosopher and friend.

Judge Dingeman is a native citizen of Detroit, where he was born July 27, 1881. He was admitted to the bar June 13, 1903, and after enjoying a large private practice for eight years, entered politics in 1911. In his initial efforts Judge Dingeman displayed his innate modesty. He began his public career by serving as estimator of the 17th ward of Detroit for two years. In 1913 he was elected alderman and during the year 1914 was chosen by his colleagues as President of the Common Council for the city of Detroit. From there he was appointed to the office of corporation counsel, where he served his city from May 1, 1915, to January 1, 1918, when he took his, seat on the Wayne Circuit bench. In 1921 he became Presiding Judge of Michigan, an office which he has held with distinction until the present. It will thus be seen that Judge Dingeman's rise in public life has been a gradual one. It is strongly believed and earnestly hoped among his friends, associates and all who know him that the next and logical step will be the bench of the Supreme Court of Michigan. It can safely be said that Judge Dingeman is the one outstanding member of the Detroit, Michigan, bench who is slated for higher things.

International law must be recognized as obligatory upon sovereign states and constraining, by inherent constitutional limitation, upon otherwise independent and discretionary political authority. The law of nations "as understood in this country," to use the words of Chief Justice Marshall, implies this restraint upon the judicial and political branches of Government under the Federal Constitution, an opinion which cannot be gainsaid when one reads the early decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and whose truth is reflected in a century of judicial opinion in America. In principle, it is "the streak of silver sea" between international peace and international chaos and political anarchy.

But the limitations of international law must be realized to reach beyond the ordinary agencies of diplomacy and bind down the mighty economic forces which today would engulf the world in new wars. These vast private agencies may no longer be permitted to defeat the great aim of international law and equity. The new code must reach the realm of invisible transaction and private contract, constraining all to the preservation of international good faith. Balance of political power is a mere shibboleth. The law of nations in its great and immemorial justices needs slight amplification, if any, but it must be internationally admitted that if the will of nations is to be read in the iight of the limitations of the law of nations, so must the will and in

tention of individuals in the economic intercourse of nations. International understandings, establishing permanent rights, and aiming at perpetual amity and friendship, must be crystallized out of the domain of revocable agreements and translated into an obligatory code.

Our American attitude as to international law is sharply differentiated from the European. This distinction is in favor of the preservation of fundamental individual right, a balance between the natural law and the positive law of nations, whereby the man is sovereign, and within the sphere of his inalienable rights has power over the nations.

The early American treaties reiterate the expression, "the law of nature and of nations." This is the democratic principle at the foundation of the American system, and in its light laws and treaties of the United States must be construed. It implies directly that naught in private enterprise affecting the international economic life of the State may transcend the limits of the general law of nation or operate in derogation of the integrity of public international obligations.

There is now a lively probability that after this Congress expired by limitation on March 4 there will be no special session. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished and, as historians said of the edifying deathbed of the Stuart king, nothing could become the life of this Congress so much as the leaving of it. Business needs a rest from politics, and it particularly needs a rest from a Congress which has suffered, more than anything else, from swelled head.

There are radical representatives and senators who have an altogether exaggerated idea of the powers of Congress, and a deluded electorate added to their number last November. The voters were deluded by assurances that Congress could do a great many things economically, morally, politically and constitutionally beyond its power. Its ability to coerce the business of the country has been preposterously exaggerated by communists in Republican clothes, such as Brookhart and La Follette. It has never been shown that any one of our regulatory bodies has added a dollar to the business turnover of the United States. But their power to impede and harass has been unconstitutionally expanded.

This is said without reflection on such eminently useful advisory bodies as the Department of Agriculture. The powers of Congress were distorted in the popular imagination by the war. Many things were done then which could not be done now. The chairman of the