Book Reviews

Unless lawyers are an unimaginative and hopelessly backward-looking social group, as some unkind critics have asserted, they will find this book one of he most suggestive and stimulating contributions to legal literature that has appeared in recent years. It touches in a broad way the whole field of the relation of legal institutions and the legal profession to the major problems of society. It demonstr4tes in a most striking manner how those who plan and administer the machinery of the law must awake to the fact that they form the front line of civilization’s defense against anarchy. And it presents in most interesting detail the results of a generation of effort to make legal agencies and institutions adequate to the performance of the new duties imposed by the changing social order. No lawyer can read the book without feeling anew the far-reaching responsibilities which rest upon the bar, and at the same time he will derive from it the most instructive suggestions as .to the exact nature of the difficulties to be met and the degree of success which has been reached and which may be expected from various reforms and ameliorating devices.