NOTES.
"HON. J. N. DEAN of Xenia, Probate Judge of Greene County, in making out the papers, a short time since, for committing a man by the name of J. W. Murphy to the insane department of the county infirmary, absent-mindedly inserted his own name in the papers where that of the crazy man's should have appeared, and the mistake was not discovered until Constable Matthews pre sented Murphy at the Infirmary. The officer then came back to town and informed the Judge that he had proper papers for his commitment to a madhouse, and asked if he would go quietly or would have the handcuffs on. The Judge altered the papers and grimly remarked that he would beg to be excused just now." THE little community of Burgsinn in the Bava rian district of Lower Franconia will shortly be able to celebrate the not over-enviable tercen tenary jubilee of a lawsuit. On the 2 ist of June, 1596, this community brought suit at the Imperial Court, then sitting in Speyer, against the Barons von Thungen, concerning a magnificent oak and beech forest of nearly eight thousand hectares in extent, which may to-day be es timated worth about two million marks, and which both parties claim as their own. It speaks volumes for the indomitable grit of these peasants, who, despite their poverty through three long centuries, generation after generation, managed to put up among themselves enough money to carry on the suit, and who, in view of a recent decree, may ultimately consider themselves the beati possittentes. IN commenting upon the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States against traffic agreements, "The American Law Review" takes occasion to make the following pointed remarks concerning the jurisdiction of courts and legis latures : "Constitutional law has so far run mad in the United States that it is a common thing to find, in judicial decisions declaring statutes unconsti tutional, long harangues against the policy or propriety of . the legislation which the judicial courts assume the power to set aside. Before a judge can refuse to enforce an act of the legis lature on the ground that it contravenes the con
stitution, he ought to be able to put his finger upon some provision of the Constitution to which the act of the legislature is plainly and distinctly opposed. It is not for him to put forward his views as to the policy of such legislation. He is not elected or appointed to perform any such of fice. Such views are uncalled for, and ought to be regarded as indecent and offensive. It is pre cisely as though the legislature, in the preamble to a statute, should arraign a particular judicial decision. The legislature often repeals the rules of law laid down in particular decisions, but, so far as we have observed, no legislature has ever done so by referring specifically to any legal judgment. The legislature repeals the law made by the judges except where the law consists of interpretations of the Constitution, because, as the law-making power, the legislature is above the judges. In theory the judges are not law makers, though in point of fact they make much more law than the legislatures make, and much of it equally as bad. This new habit which the judges are taking on, of discussing the policy of acts of legislation which are challenged before them, is simply an assumption of superiority over the legislature in matters which are purely legis lative; whereas their true position is exactly the reverse. In ordinary legislative matters they are inferior to the legislature. In other words, out side of the province of declaring the state of the supposed preexisting common law, they have no legislative power at all, their mere function being to administer the laws. "The so-called ' general law ' is almost always held by the judges to be reasonable, because the judges themselves made it. To construe every statute which alters or repeals a rule of this rea sonable judge-made law, so as to make it reason able, would be to write it out of existence, and leave the law in that reasonable condition in which it stood before the legislature enacted the statute. That is precisely what the dissenting judges would have had the courts do." ENTERPRISING; New England hunters who live near the boundary line of Maine and New Hampshire, taking advantage of the bounty laws of each State, are getting double pay for each bear killed. New Hampshire pays so much for each pair of ears, while Maine keeps tally by the nose.
