Book Reviews

Dr. Freund’s book was read by the reviewer in the summer of 1917, but a combination of circumstances, greatly regretted by him, has prevented the completion and publishing of the review then pa’rtially prepared. The justification for printing it now lies in the excellence of Dr. Freund’s work and. in the vital importance of careful study by American lawyers of the too long neglected field of legislation as, with the War, apparently ended, the Nation enters upon a period of political and social reconstruction, which seems destined to be epochal. With the organized forces of the titanic struggle halted, and its tumult suddenly stilled, we emerge swiftly into a period of seeming calm, but portentous with the suggestion which we now only vaguely sense and cannot yet analyze, that the mighty forces released in the world’s convulsion cannot be returned within their old confines. It is a time that calls for constructive statesmanship of a high order; many complex and radical changes will undoubtedly be made, changes for the making of which the gradual processes of the courts, and precedents and stare decLsis were never designed and for which they are totally inadequate. The ship of state can be kept on a true course, as it emerges from the international storm, only by the resort to legislation, organic or fundamental and ordinary, unless indeed the hyenas of society, aided by hair-brained and egotistical visionaries are to subject us to the direct and destructive methods of Bolshevism. At any rate it would seem that our courts as at present organized, hampered by tradition and restricted and in important respects made ineffectual by archaic and blundering constitutional and legislative checks and restrictions in many states will be wholly unequal to serve as the agents of the inevitable transition,* and that the volume of our legislation already overwhelming will be enormously augmented.