Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/189

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
161
HARVARD LAW REVIEW.
161

REVIEIVS. l6l REVIEWS. The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. By Sir Frederick Pollock and Frederick William Maitland. Cambridge, England : At the University Press. 1895. 2 vols. 8vo. This work, awaited with eager anticipation by all interested in legal his- tory, came to hand so recendy that the examination that its great merits demand must be postponed to a later number of the Review. There is only opportunity here to remark that the distinguished authors have thrown a flood of light upon the darkest period of English law, the two centuries following the Norman Conquest, and have been singularly suc- cessful in giving the result of their investigation in a form to excite and hold the interest of the reader. New Criminal Procedure. By Joel Prentiss Bishop, LL.D. Fourth Edition, Vol. I., General and Elementary. Chicago : T. H. Flood & Co. 1895. 8vo. pp. xxvi, 921. It is always pleasant to get a new volume from Mr. Bishop's pen, even if it is only a new edition. This book has novelty of form, at least. A large part of it has been entirely rewritten, not with any change of sense, but to make the meaning clearer and the language more concise. His series of works upon the Criminal Law is probably Mr. Bishop's chief contribution to legal learning ; and most lawyers will recognize the singular value of it. The subject had enlisted the best efforts of such lawyers of genius as Coke, Hale, Hawkins, Foster, and East ; yet Bishop found it a congeries of imperfectly related doctrines, and has left it a science. The ability of our author rightly to deduce legal principles, and the difference between his methods and those of the ordinary compiler of text-books, is strikingly shown in § 220, in the chapter on Extradition, where the phrase *' fleeing from justice " is discussed. In the third edi- tion the paragraph stood thus : " Hence it seems that if one commits a crime in a State in which he is not personally present, — as in various circumstances he may, — there is no means by which he can be trans- ferred, against his will, to the place of its commission to be tried, — a question 7iot, probably, Judicially determined." In the present edition the words in italics are omitted, and two recent cases are cited in support of the proposition. A still later case may be remembered as having caused considerable discussion, — State y, Hall^ 20 S. E. 729 (see 8 Harvard Law Review, 494). Mr. Bishop, it would seem, nowhere cites two ear- lier cases to the same effect, — yones v. Leonard, 50 la. 106, and Hart- man V. Aveline, 63 Ind. 344. Both cases were decided in 1878, two years before the date of the third edition. Another important case which seems to be omitted is Castro v. I^eg., 6 A pp. Cas. 229. The omission of it is the more remarkable, because it fully supports our author's vigorous attack upon the doctrine oi' People v. Liscomb (§ 458, note i). One cannot assert too positively that the case is nowhere cited, because there is no Table of Cases for this volume, — a serious defect, though of course the table will appear in the second volume when it is issued.