analysis of the Constitution of the United States as amended to date." This analysis is arranged under five heads: "Legislative Branch," "Executive Branch," "Judicial Branch," "Relations of Federal and State Governments" and "Preamble-Bill of RightsOther Provisions." Colored underscoring shows where a provision belonging primarily under one head, relates secondarily to another. Each provision is followed by a bold-faced number which refers to one of the consecutively numbered provisions in the text of the Constitution, which is printed on the reverse side of the sheet.

This chart gives a graphic picture of the plan and operation of the Federal Constitution. It should be peculiarly useful in citizenship classes, and as an aid in the effort to teach the fundamentals of the Constitution in our schools. Its graphic analysis will also be found helpful by all those who are studying our Constitution either as a political or as a legal document.

C. K. B.

The Power of an Insured to Control the Proceeds of his Policies. By Guy B. Horton, Montpelier, Vt. 1926. p. 88.

There are few more striking phenomena in the field of social and economical betterment in recent years than the extraordinary growth and varied development in the applications of insurance. A generation ago, the range of the business and law of insurance was mainly confined to marine, fire and life insurance. Now, in subject matter, insurance has extended to ameliorate loss in very many sorts of human activities. Consequently the law, by legislation and judicial decision, is compelled to adjust itself to these later and more varied developments in the applications of the principles of insurance. A glance at the Current Digest of the decisions of the courts in this country shows that today the title Insurance has become, so far as the number of paragraphs under it is concerned, one of the half dozen leading topics in the Digest.

In the domain of life insurance, the two most recent and useful advances are probably "group insurance" and the "insurance trust." As an explanation of the business practice of the insurance trust, and particularly as a discussion of the legal problems connected with it, Mr. Horton has made in this little book a distinctly useful contribution to the pioneer writing upon the subject. The common practice and customary idea has been that the avails of a life policy were to be paid in a lump sum to the beneficiary. But suppose, for example, the insured desires that his policy when payable shall be paid in deferred periods and with some provisional or contingent disposition of the corpus or income of the sum due from the insurance company. Is the legal relation as among insured, insurer and beneficiary, simply contractual and involving primarily the right of a direct beneficiary of a contract to enforce it; or is it a fiduciary, trust, or what the author calls a "quasi trust" relation? Do the provisions for the disposition of the avails of the policy run counter to the rules against perpetuities, remoteness, restraints upon alienation, or accumulations? These are the questions that in various aspects

are about to confront, and perhaps perplex the courts, until some convenient, workable and legal plan is worked out by legislatures and courts, whereby a useful and desired end can be reached.

The author of this monograph, out of his experience and study of law and insurance, as a member of the legal department of one of the long established life insurance companies, offers here his expert aid in the endeavor to give greater flexibility, with proper legality, to the disposition of sums payable as the fruit of the life policy. He states typical modes, by present insurance practice, of attempting to reach the result, gives the gist of pertinent statutes and decisions, and refers to such scanty literature as exists upon the particular problems of the insurance trust. He states that the chief value of his offering "will be as a source book for future inquiry." Undoubtedly his essay will have this value in the impending closer juxtaposition of the law of life insurance to the law of trusts.

E. H. Woodruff.

Preparation and Construction of Wills. By Clarence M. Lewis. Matthew Bender & Co. New York. 1926. pp. viii, 1115.

Mr. Lewis presents this volume as a companion to his "Law of Leases." He has adopted the same plan in the presentation of his material. The book is designed for lawyers and trust officers as "a guide for the preparation and construction of wills."

Mr. Lewis offers proposed forms of forty-two clauses which a practitioner may need in drafting wills. Each clause is followed by a brief digest of pertinent cases from various jurisdictions. Many Law Review notes are presented in full. The title page advises the reader that the clauses are "exhaustively annotated." The first and last clauses are representative of the work. The 156 illustrative cases digested under the "Revocation" clause are chosen from 30 jurisdictions. The principal cases are distributed as follows: New York, 37; British, 30; Massachusetts, 10; Illinois, 7; Connecticut and Pennsylvania, 6 each; California, Georgia, Michigan and New Jersey, 5 each. Nine jurisdictions are represented by only one. The "Attestation" clause is annotated by 79 digested cases, one-half of which represent three jurisdictions, as follows: New York, 31; Massachusetts, 11; Illinois, 12. The Law Review notes are taken largely from only two periodicals. A disinterested critic may well object to characterizing such annotations as "exhaustive."

The introductory material contains, in addition to a short form of will, a condensed "Schedule of Information for Preparation of Will" and a "Record and Check Sheet" in the administration of an estate which are helpful mechanical devices for a practitioner.

For ready reference the "Forty-two Forms of Clauses" are collected in the back of the book. There, also, is to be found a classified bibliography which is a useful guide. In a footnote to each clause, a few citations to textbooks are given. These do not always seem to be well chosen. The remedy for this defect may be found in the bibli

'Reviewed by Dean George G. Bogert in 10 Cornell Law QUARTERLY 416.

ography. The book also incorporates a collection of eleven important wills, among which are those of Roosevelt and Wilson. As an exemplification of artistic brevity, the will of the late Chief Justice Edward D. White should have been included.

As a guide, the volume presents some interesting and valuable material in attractive form.

Herbert D. Laube.

Cases on Mortgages. James Lewis Parks. West Publishing Company. St. Paul, Minn. p. xiii, 537. 1926.

The old saw that the proof of the pudding lies in the eating thereof applies with peculiar emphasis to a case book. The appearance of a number of collections of cases on the law of Mortgages testifies to a need which arose as the older collections went out of print. The field is one in which it is unusually difficult to combine theory and practical applications in proper proportion, and the complaint most often urged against case books and teachers alike is that there has been a failure to do so. Professor Parks, in following his purpose to show in what way American courts are dealing with questions in mortgage law, has presented an almost entirely new array of cases. The cases which hitherto have been the landmarks of study in this field are largely relegated to footnotes, or are found in the body of printed opinions, or, in some cases, have been omitted entirely. The use of modern cases, insofar as they may present more easily understandable problems, is desirable, but there is no hope, and the editor of these cases does not claim, that he has avoided the inherent complexity of the mortgage problems. Until these cases have been tried out in actual use, it will not be possible to determine whether this new arrangement has succeeded in presenting the historical background essential to a full understanding of many of the accepted rules. As this is material which must be developed largely according to the discretion of the individual instructor, the material which is offered seems sufficient to meet the needs of any but the most exacting person, and to be as fully developed as may be within the time now normally allotted to the course.

Professor Parks has shown good judgment in his refusal to make his case book a rival to the encyclopedia. One heaves a sigh of relief upon the discovery that he may develop his instruction in his own way with these cases as a basis, and is not perforce compelled to scale the mountains and wade through the morasses of collateral material which have well nigh ruined many otherwise excellent case books.

Those of us who have been accustomed to follow a mortgage through the normal chronology of its existence will be compelled to re-align our ideas to meet a grouping based upon logical association, but will, no doubt, find it profitable and stimulating to do so. Those of us who had hoped to find some editor who would provide us with

23 Docket 2485 (1922).

material with which to answer the frequently recurring question, "Now that I have a mortgage, how do I make it effective?" will scarcely find the proffered material adequate. It is, unquestionably, debatable, whether such material properly might be included in this course, just as it is debatable whether or not a law school should undertake to teach the principles of practice. To the present writer both things seem highly desirable. Those who do not hold the same point of view will not find this suggestion a matter for complaint. Taken as a whole the work is well done, the collection of material seems interesting and seems pedagogically to have been well arranged, so that after inspection one is left with a desire to try the book out in actual use, which is, after all, a reasonably fair test of its quality. Lyman P. Wilson.

How to Study Law. Albert Lévitt. American Law Book Company, Brooklyn. p. 28. 1926.

Professor Lévitt has managed to crowd much useful information into the twenty-eight pages of this pamphlet. Much of it has been said before, but all of it will bear frequent reiteration. Students are likely to find the suggested system of polychrome underscorings to be needlessly unwieldy, and the student will exhibit unusual self-control who can observe rigidly the time schedules suggested as a proper basis for the distribution of the days work. This pamphlet, then, is a sort of "shot-gun prescription" containing nothing which can harm and much that has therapeutic value. Its worth is much greater than its limited size and modest price might suggest.

L. P. W.

The Chief Sources of English Legal History. By Percy Henry Winfield. Cambridge, Mass., 1925. pp. xviii, 374.

This book seeks to assist the student who would undertake research in the history of English law, to show him the character of the material with which he has to deal, and to give him some general conception of just what those materials are and how they may be found. It does not purport to be a bibliography; but it does call attention to the principal sources and gives some analysis of their reliability and value. The chief groups of sources are discussed at length and with insight. The book is primarily for beginners in research and it has the virtue, especially essential in such a work, of being extremely readable.

The author recognizes the need for a genuine bibliography of English legal history, a gap which this volume makes no pretence to fill. He calls attention to the amount of labor which such an undertaking would entail, especially in connection with the unpublished documentary material. Such bibliographies and indices as have been previously published are listed with critical comments upon them; these include the works of Holdsworth, Gross, Maitland and others.

The book grew out of a series of lectures delivered by Dr. Winfield at the Harvard Law School in the winter and spring of 1923, and it contains a short introduction by Dean Pound. The period covered extends from the beginning of English legal history to Blackstone, whose commentaries were first printed in 1765-1769. The whole of the discussion is therefore pertinent to American legal history and its background just as much as to that of England and the British. Empire, since our courts adopted the common law as it existed at the time of our revolution. After a short chapter on the nature of research and the qualifications which it requires, the author examines the existing bibliographical guides. He then deals with the sources of Anglo-Saxon law, listing the editions of the laws of the AngloSaxon kings, records of the legal forms used in that very technical system, legal treatises and histories which deal with it. In his chapter on the influence of Roman law he includes a bibliography of some of the leading authorities, both upon the Roman law itself and also upon Canon law. The discussion of these matters is not extensive and the first four chapters occupy all together only seventy pages.

The subsequent chapters are larger and are each devoted to some one kind of legal record, sequence among them being determined by the authority or importance of the various kinds of material considered. First comes one on statutes since they have the highest authority; this is followed by those on public records in general, on case law, on abridgement, and finally that on case books and books of practice. Each of these chapters begins with a discussion of the nature of the material to be treated, proceeds with suggestions on the way to find it and use it, and ends with specific bibliographical lists. To many of the references in these lists are appended extensive notes containing important critical information. After remarks concerning classification, it turns to the internal arrangement and mode of citation of statutes, then to the question of duration and territorial limitations, and finally to that of interpretation. The bibliography with which all this is followed should enable the student to know just where to look for any statute of importance.

Public records are grouped in one chapter, which includes those that are sources of early statutes and important to the understanding of early decisions, as well as those that are of less importance. The chapter on case law contains an adequate discussion of the YearBooks. Abridgements compiled at various times are next considered; to the bibliographical list of them are appended such notes as will enable the student to tell quickly which are best suited to his purposes. The discussion of text-books and books of practice opens by pointing out that books about the law are rare, that most volumes are mere manuals of procedure, and that this is especially true of the earlier works. Much space is devoted, however, to each of the great efforts at a systematic exposition of English law, with especial attention to the works of Glanville, Bracton, Littleton, Coke and Blackstone.

Of interest to the students of history is the chart on p. 131, showing the development of the curia regis and its descendants. This is