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The Green Bag
points, and the opinions concerning it expressed by some of our greatest living jurists, and then notice the improve ment in the present edition, we feel it is but justice that to accord it at least as full praise as the late Seymour D. Thompson, in the American Law Re view, bestowed upon the first edition, when he declared:— A great effort has been made to reduce the heterogeny we call American Law to an accurate analysis—and the filling in of this great scheme of classification, so as to state in outline what the American Law is under every subdivision, is indeed a higher argu ment than the classication itself. It is in this that the work of the author challenges admiration. It is at once compact, clear and elegant. Neither Blackstone, nor Kent, nor Story, nor Greenleaf, excels it. . . . Everything on which our eye has fallen, in a vain search to find something wrong, has been stated with the greatest accuracy and with consummate skill in the choice of words. So also Judge M. F. Morris, Justice of the Court of Appeals, Washington, D.C., declares concerning it:— A great work undoubtedly placed on true philosophical foundations. We of the profession owe it to the author to acknowledge that he has pro duced the greatest Commentary on our law, both national and state, that has yet appeared, not only in matter of style but in completeness, depth, and the intrinsic strength of the treatment of specific topics. In accomplishing this result, the author enunciates a principle of classifi cation, and creates a logical synthetic plan governing all the processes of com pilation, statement and citation. The fundamental system followed is to state all rules according to the objects to which they relate, on which point see the author's clear-cut views (pp. 36 to 41).
One point of special significance (see pp. 39-40) is the author's affirmation that there is an understructure of ar rangement, identical in all systems of law, and he demonstrates it by illustra tions from various systems, supported by the opinions of eminent jurists. The structural arrangement of the work is very simple. First there is an Introduction or general part, followed by the Commen taries on American Law. This is divided into four great sub-divisions: (1) The law concerning personal relations, or in one word, Persons. (2) The law of property, in a word, Things. (3) The law of judicial protection and repara tion, or Actions. (4) The law concerning the prevention, detection, and punish ment of Crimes. The portion treating of general juris prudence shows the nature of Law, Right, and Government, with clear defi nitions of leading words, and an explana tion of the origin and theory of the ideas which are necessarily constantly used throughout the discourse. This part is deserving of a commendation which cannot generally be accorded the writer on jurisprudence, for the author presents not abstract jurisprudence but applied jurisprudence. He shows by practical illustration and citation of cases the application of these theories in the everyday law of the country, as for example that jural rights, as asserted by Wilson and Locke, arise by consent (see p. 5); that equality, and the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, as declared in the Declara tion of Independence, are practical and positive limitations on legislative power (pp. 22-23). No American jurist other than James Wilson has heretofore combined the his torical acumen and metaphysical rea soning with the immediate practical
