Ruling Cases. Arranged, annotated, and edited by Robert Campbell, MA.,
and other Members of the Bar. With American Notes by Irving Browne. Vols. XVII. and XVIII. (Stevens and Sons. 25s. each net.)—The series of Ruling Cases is making steady, and even rapid, progress towards completion, and the editing and arrangement show, if anything, an improvement on the early volumes. At the same time the selection of headings under which the cases are distributed is not yet beyond criticism. Thus in Vol. XVII. the ruling case as to heriots, or the right of the lord of the manor to take the best beast on the tenant's death, comes under "Manorial Right," where no one would look for it, and there is no heading or cross-reference " Heriot." A careful index will be wanted to make good defects of this kind, which, however, are more or less inevitable in a subject so un- systematic and ill-arranged as English law. Under " Marriage " come the two famous cases " Dalrymple v. Dalrymple" and "Regina v. Millis," the first of which recognised that in Scot- land, according to the old Canon Law of Christendom, marriage by contract was valid without religious celebration, while in the second case the House of Lords decided that in England the presence of a priest before the Reformation, and afterwards of a person in Holy Orders, was essential to a valid marriage. This decision is good law, and could only be reversed by Act of Parliament, but it is now admittedly bad history, seeing that it misstates the past. This, however, is not the first unhistorical proposition that has been affirmed as law. The articles "Master and Servant" and "Mines and Minerals" fill the greater part of
this volume. Most of Vol. is devoted to an excellent arrangement of the cases on Mortgage, amounting in fact to a treatise on the whole subject by the late Mr. Gordon Robbins, the leading authority, who unfortunately died while the volume was at press. The editor also records the loss of his American colleague, Mr. Irving Browne, whose place will be supplied by the Hon. Leonard A. Jones, a well-known American text-writer.
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