CURRENT LITERATURE
LECTURES ON THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION By Sir Maurice Sheldon Amos
No set of governmental institutions in the world is so legal in character as the American. To understand the work- ings, the potentialities, the defects of the American system is impossible without a far greater amount of prelimin- ary legal knowledge than is needed for the understanding of our own or of French institutions. , A lawyer of Sir Maurice Amos's eminence has, then, a special qualification for describing the essentials of American government and in addition, as an authority on compara- tive law, Sir Maurice is not disposed to accept as sufficient ground for approval or condemnation, resemblance to English practice. Too many commentators on American institutions are prone to fall into the attitude of the farmer who saw the giraffe and cry " impossible." Sir Maurice Amos does not do that, although even he has difficulty in restraining that or some similar remark when he sees what wonders American courts have worked with the simple sesame of " due process of law." Although mainly of interest to the lawyer and to the student of comparative institutions, this book (Longmans, 75. 6d.) is so clear and so well planned that it makes, if not easy, profitable reading for the complete amateur who here is introduced to one of the most remarkable political achieve- ments in the world, the domination of the politics of the most powerful State by the idea of the " rule of law " or, as some think, by the " rule of lawyers." And if Sir Maurice sometimes normally preserves a super-human impartiality, he is perhaps a little less than just to the ill-fated Judiciary Bill of last year. It was not in fact, if it was in form, based on the view that the justices of the Supreme Court were too old, but that they were in fact a legislature which needed reconstruction.
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