the action of the legislature which comes to him in the form of an appropriation bill"; and further that "in case the veto is overruled, then the chief executive has the right to refuse to execute the mandate and go back to the people on the issue." This is strange doctrine indeed. What is the nature of the "right" which the president enjoys to refuse to execute any law? It is certainly not a legal right; and although it would be difficult to reach the president himself by judicial process, it would be a comparatively simple matter to compel the enforcement of the law by every officer subordinate to him. This impracticable proposal only serves to emphasize the futility of any proposal for fundamental budgetary reform which does not rest upon vesting in the executive a larger element of legal control in the determination of governmental expenditures, unless, perchance, we are sanguine enough to believe that Congress will voluntarily pass over to the president a power which to the individual member is now pregnant with personal political significance.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

HOWARD L. McBAIN.

A Treatise on the Laws Governing the Exclusion and Expulsion of Aliens in the United States. By CLEMENT L. Bouvé. Washington, John Byrne and Company, 1912.-xxvi, 915 pp.

It is a strange circumstance that no comprehensive work has heretofore been published regarding that branch of our public law which governs the right of aliens to enter the United States and the power of the government to deport unnaturalized aliens already residing here. Mr. Bouvé has rendered a great service to the legal profession and to the country at large by presenting this valuable pioneer work. By express statutory provision important powers involving the interests of millions of persons, including even the decision of disputed claims to citizenship, are delegated to the theoretically non-reviewable action of mere administrative officials. Since these officials are often without legal training even, they have especial need of such guidance in knowing and applying the law relating to their duties as can be furnished by an able and impartial lawyer like Mr. Bouvé. The absence of any such work heretofore has made it possible for the rights of aliens with respect to exclusion and deportation to be left largely to the individual. caprice of the inspectors, whose decisions must necessarily be more influenced by the attitude of their temporary immediate superiors than by the law of the land."

Mr. Bouvé has divided his work into six chapters, entitled respec

tively "Power and Methods of Exclusion and Expulsion" (148 pages), "The Existing Immigration Law" (172 pages), "Status (of Aliens)" (156 pages), "Judicial Review of Administrative Decisions" (70 pages), "Evidence" (67 pages) and "Deportation Procedure " (71 pages). In an appendix he reprints important foreign statutes regarding expulsion and exclusion of aliens, our Chinese Exclusion Laws, the present regulations for enforcing these laws, the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 and the Philippine Commission Acts on the subject. Attention is given in the text to the General Immigration Laws and their construction, and to the Chinese Exclusion Laws. The section dealing with "Status" contains important contributions to the law regarding citizenship, naturalization and expatriation. The grave conflicts in judicial decisions upon many of the points involved have led Mr. Bouvé in a number of instances to make valuable criticisms of judicial opinions. These conflicts are often due to the failure to notice judicial precedents, for in the large majority of the cases here involved, the limited means of the aliens have prevented them from securing competent legal assistance, while trained experts have opposed their contentions on behalf of the government.

It is to be regretted that Mr. Bouvé has confined himself so closely to the judicial decisions construing these statutes, and has so largely ignored the administrative rulings. The percentage of cases which reach the courts is of course infinitesimally small, and even then the provisions which the courts are called upon to construe are seldom the ones under which the overwhelming majority of exclusions take place, as for example the "likelihood to become a public charge" clause, the clause excluding persons" certified as being mentally or physically defective" where the defect "may affect the ability of such alien to earn a living," and the "assisted immigrant" clause. The published volumes of Treasury Decisions contain several hundred useful, able (though forgotten) rulings under the immigration laws, prior to the creation of the Department of Commerce and Labor. These have been slightly amplified since by a few important printed Decisions of the latter department and Opinions of the Attorneys General. Yet practically none of these is even cited by Mr. Bouvé. Though he observes that congressional reports on immigration and congressional debates often throw valuable light on the meaning of these statutes, one fails to find even a list of these, much less citations of important ones in connection with the provisions of the law to which they related. It is to be hoped that a future edition will also contain the "regulations" promulgated under the General Immigration Laws, which are of far more general value than

those under the Chinese Exclusion Laws, which Mr. Bouvé reprints, and also that the text of the various earlier immigration laws be reprinted for convenient reference, and that the index be unified. The student will, however, find these various immigration laws collected in Volume 39 of the Immigration Commission's Reports (Senate Document, 61st Cong., 3rd Session, Doc. No. 758), entitled "Immigration Legislation," together with an interesting historical review of our immigration legislation.

NEW YORK CITY.

MAX J. KOHLER.

Constitutional Law. By JAMES PARKER HALL. Chicago, La Salle Extension University, 1911.-xiv, 457 pp.

The difficult task of presenting to the layman a brief but comprehensive exposition of the constitutional law of the United States, with simplicity and yet with scientific accuracy, has been admirably accomplished by Dean James Parker Hall of the Law School of the University of Chicago in the 375 pages of text of his volume under review. The work was written originally as volume one in a series entitled American Law and Procedure. This series was evolved under the general editorship of Dean Hall and was designed primarily for the general reader. The author was in no way responsible for the subsequent purchase of the series and the use of the volumes comprising it as text books for teaching prospective lawyers by the correspondence method-a method which he firmly believes unsatisfactory as a means of professional training. His work is to be judged, therefore, entirely from the standpoint of the general reader. Viewed in this aspect, it commands unqualified approval.

The work is divided into three parts. In Part I, which comprises 49 pages and is entitled "General Conceptions," the author treats briefly the nature of constitutional government, the distinction between written and unwritten constitutions, the historical background of the Constitution of the United States, the method by which constitutions are made and amended, the separation of powers and the partition of authority between the state and the national governments. He then discusses the fundamental question of the function of the judiciary in the enforcement of constitutional provisions. The practice in England and on the continent is referred to as an indication that the interpretation and enforcement of constitutional guarantees is not of necessity the function of the judiciary. The colonial practice is properly regarded as not involving final judicial power over a coördinate legisla

tive body and as furnishing no authoritative precedent for the exercise of a similar power after the colonies became independent. But after observing that the colonies had seen colonial laws occasionally declared void by the courts, the author concludes:

To the conservative classes of the community, which at that time had a strong controlling influence, this seemed a wise and sensible means of enforcing constitutional guarantees of security of property against the possible excesses of a legislature chosen by popular suffrage. So, on the adoption of the state constitutions, the courts tacitly assumed the function of interpreting the constitution for the legislature, and this was generally acquiesced in, though not without some opposition.

Professor Hall thinks that it is likely that the convention expected the courts to exercise this power, and quotes Hamilton. Disagreeing with the reasoning of Marbury v. Madison, he concludes that the true reasons for the American practice are political. He feels that it is desirable that the power be exercised by some authority other than that upon whose actions restrictions are placed in the interest of individual rights, and he believes that usurpation is best avoided by giving this power to that department of government which is politically the weakest. The author feels, however, that the judges should not exercise this power according to their individual social or economic views and insists that statutes should be sustained if they can reasonably be thought constitutional. He quotes judicial utterances which accord with his views, but makes no attempt to discover how far they are applied in actual practice.

Part II is entitled "Fundamental Rights" and deals with that part of the constitution which Professor Burgess calls the constitution of liberty, as distinguished from the constitution of government. Sixteen pages are devoted to a discussion of the history and scope of fundamental constitutional rights, 30 pages to laws impairing the obligation of contracts, 20 pages to protection to persons accused of crime, and the same space is accorded to a treatment of political rights, including the subjects of citizenship, naturalization, suffrage, freedom of speech and of the press and the rights of assemblage and of petition. Under the head of due process of law and equal protection of the laws, 20 pages each are given to questions of procedure and to the subject of eminent domain, 25 pages deal with the police power, and 40 pages with the subject of taxation, subdivided under the heads of jurisdiction, public purpose and classification of objects for taxation. The fine sense of proportion and of relative values displayed in Part II is equally characteristic of Part III, which is entitled "The Federal Government."

Here we find a presentation of the law relating to territories and dependencies, the relations of the states to each other and to the United States, the jurisdiction of the federal courts, and the various powers of Congress, with special attention to the regulation of commerce. The division of each chapter into sections and sub-sections is done with a skill which makes it simple for the reader to find what he wants to know and to know what he finds.

The accuracy with which the author has handled his material deprives the reviewer of any opportunity for detailed criticism. The work throughout displays a happy blending of general statement with explanation and with concrete illustration. A word of caution must be given, however, lest the reader presume too much from the simplicity and lucidity of the author's exposition. It leads one to infer that the decisions of the courts have given us a body of constitutional law much more compact and consistent than it really is. Its intricacies can properly be apprehended and solved only by a close analysis and comparison of the decisions themselves.

THOMAS REED Powell.

Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History. Edited by PAUL VINOGRADOFF. Vol. II. Types of Manorial Structure in the Northern Danelaw. By F. M. STENTON. Customary Rents. By N. NEILSON. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1910.-iv, 315 pp.

The two monographs contained in this volume of the Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History are the result of detailed and painstaking examination of the original sources. They constitute a valuable contribution to the subject which the learned editor has in a very special sense made his own-the history of English manorial institutions. Each of the essays is accompanied by an excellent apparatus of fcotnotes in which the reader will find full citations of the original materials and many quotations from them.

In Types of Manorial Structure in the Northern Danelaw Mr. Stenton devotes his attention to the counties of York, Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Lincoln, and Rutland. Although he has carefully examined and skilfully used Anglo-Danish charters and early twelfthcentury documents, the entries in Domesday Book constitute his chief materials. His monograph is particularly welcome as a further indication of the increasing attention now being paid by historical scholars to the study of Danish influences upon English mediæval institutions. In furnishing us with the basis for a comparison of the growth of the