A collection of book reviews by multiple authors

Goddard, Edwin C

Lane, Victor H

Waite, John B

Yntema, Hester E

English

University of Michigan School of Law

Michigan Law Review Volume 12 Issue 3 1914 Book Reviews John B. Waite University of Michigan Law School Hester E. Yntema University of Michigan Law School Victor H. Lane University of Michigan Law School Edwin C. Goddard University of Michigan Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr  Part of the Legal Writing and Research Commons Recommended Citation John B. Waite, Hester E. Yntema, Victor H. Lane & Edwin C. Goddard, Book Reviews, 12 MICH. L. REV. 242 (1914). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol12/iss3/6  This Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Michigan Law Review at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact mlaw.repository@umich.edu. BOOK REVIEWS. REGULATION. VALUATION AND DEPRECIATION OF PUBLIC UTILITIES. ' By Samuel •S. Wyer, M. E., Consulting Engineer, -Columbus, Ohio. ,Columbus: _ l'I'he 'Sears & Simpson Company, 1913. PR• 313. W1hen the_ Supreme ·Court of :the United States modified the .doctrine en Mmin v. Illinois, by ·holding that, although the fixing of rates rwas a legis- _ lative ,function, it was a judicial m,atter to ,pass upon their reasonableness, it is doubtful if anyone realized the nature and extent of the undertaking upon which the courts ,._;ere about to enter. Judicial machinery, in rn,any ways, is unfitted to deal wibh the administrative and engineering problems tliat have arisen with a r-apidity and a -complexity that could scarcely have ·been anticipated. The result •has been a union of the ,work of the eng,ineer and the lawyer, <which '.has required on the part of the engineer a legal knowl-edge, and on the part of the lawyer an engineerm:g knowledge, of at least the fudamentals of .all the complicated problems rthat •hive been invofved in the v.aluation of our immense public utilities, and in the determining of whether current rates would yield a proper return, upon the value. of the plant. It is still and always win be necessary ih questions of this kind for the expert engi-neer an·d the expert lawyer to :work together, •but neither can understandingly work together without such a general knowledge of the other's fiefd. This is well brought out in Mr. Wyer's.,book, which is written prirn.arily £rom the ,point of view of the engineer, -but which has to make use _of a great number of legal decisions, in the main from the Supreme ·Court of the United States, but to a less extent from various other •federal courts and from a -considerable proportion of the courts of the several states. The point of view of the book is perhaps ·best given in the author's own language. "'Dhis book is not a pa11tisan appeal for the rights either of the Public or the Public Utilities. Rather it is an unbiased discussion and concise compilation of the - pertinent economic, engineering and legal facts relating to both. '.My aim is to establish a code for both, rather than an ex parte argument for either in-terest. The book is limited· to the discussion of 11asic principles. Therefore, no reference is made to the kaleidoscopic and ephemeral regulation enact-ments of the different States and Municipalities. Neith~r can 11lanket rules be given that •blindly applied'-without expert legal or engineering knowledge of the local conditions-as a test for the cost of Utility service or regulation st.andatds in any given case. My own ar-gument is fortified with numerous digested opinions of experts and judici.al decisions, many of the latter -being from the United ,States Supreme Court." This purpose the author 1has so ,well carried out that _the •book will- be of real value to every lawyer engaged in a case involving the question of pll'b-]ic -utilities. It is also -doubtless of value to engJneers as -a pocket hand--book, full of useful matter, 11ut somewhat elementary from the engineering i)oint of view. The book covers the definitions, economics, public confrol and protec• BOO!( REVIEWS tion of public utilities; depreciation, valuation, and engineering data necessary in determining question·s of regulation and valua:tion- of such utilities; and finally a chapter of valuable reference data, mostly engineering, and an ex.-tended selected bibliography,-eng:ineering, economic, and legal, including such contributions as the valuable paper before the American Society of_ Civil Engineers (Transactions, Vol. 72, p. r), ·by Professor Henry Earl Riggs, of the Engineering .Department of the University of Mfohigam The •work contains numerous cuts and tables, illustrating especially the effects of various kinds of depreciation, and the engineering and economic problems invoJ.ved in the construction and operation of public works. The law to be found in the book is too meager to ,be of any panticular value to a lawyer. but the engineering in.formation he can understand ,and needs, and this covers the greater part of the work. If any _criticism is to ·be made, it migh!f: be urged that the legal side of the question •is rather briefly treated even for. the engineer, ·but it is certainly a valuable re.ference hand-book from his point of view, and, in any case, he will h,ave to rely largely upon the law-yer for legal matters, just ,as the laWYer must rely upon the expert engineer for engineering knowledge. -The book is printed on very thin paper, and is well bound in -leather, so that it is in convenient form for use as a •hand or pocket book. E. •C. G. BOOTH ON Sr~ RAILWAYS, •Second iEdition~ by Isaac C. Sutton and Paul H. Denniston, of the Philadelphia Bar. Philadelphia: T. & J. W. John-son Co., 19n. pp. cxi, 922. If to the writer of olden time it seemed that to the making of books there was no end, we may add at the present time that to the size of law -books there seems to ·be no end. When Story wrote his classical work on, Bailments and Carriers, the first on the subject, he gave a small portion of the dosing part of the book to carriers. Even, the early editions of t'h.e next classic,, Hutchinson on Carrier-s, were all one volume editions, •but it has now stretch-ed out to three volumes. M~ntime, more than twenty years ago, Mr. Booth -. regarded the subject of street railway law ,as important enough to justify separate treatment. The present work is a second edition, and although it has extended from the 749, xvii, pages of the first edition, to the 922, cxi, pages of the present, "the editors are to be commended for their restraint in keeping the work within a single volume. :The additional matter is due in ,part to a very large increase in the notes and citations of cases (,T,he first edition cited about 1,400 and the second cites something like 2,500), b_ut there jg also a considerable expansion of the text, and a whole new chapter in addition on interurban railw.ays, a subject which -had hardly made its appearam:e at all when the first edition was printed. Many of the changes in the text illustrate 1how the mechanics of street railways as well as the law, have •been developing in the last twenty years. For example, in the first edition) the street -raihvay is defined as ·one 111, which "c.ars are propelled by ,animal or other power." T·4e ·second -edition has this,-one in which "cars are propelled by electrical or other power." In the first MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW edition under, "Who May Acquir~ the Right," the right is usually conf.erred on coi;porations, ·but often on natural persons. Under the same title in the second, it is said ,that ,the right is usually conf.erred upon corporations, tbut often upon natural persons, or upon municipal corporations. Changes ,are egpecially noticeable in such parts of the work as chapter six, "Electric Street Railways." At ,the time of ·the first edition eleclridty was -so promising as to "rend.er it highly probable that it will soon 1be the most common motive power in use." Railways of this cl.ass ar.e still upon the threshold of the prolonged li;tigation through which every new use of the public thoroughfares must pass. In the new edition, electricity is so efficient "as to make it the-- most com-mon motive power in use" and "raihvays of this class were long engaged in protmoted litigation th·rough Which every new use of the public thorough-fares must pass .... the law has now largely beoo se-ttled both by statute and decision." :The first edition was long the standard work on the special subject of street railways. The new edition has retained the desir.able fea,tures and 11:he excellencies of the old and has. brought the work down to the present. WJiile the ·book no longer has the •field to itself,, it will no doubt, in thi,s new .form, _ retain i,ts position as an important rderence text on the Iaw of street rail-ways, embracing as it does a treatment of urb.arn, subur,ban and interurban, surface, subsurface and elevated railways, whether operated ,by ;animal power, electricity, cable, 0!" steam motor. ·E. C. G. HANDBOOK ON 'J.'HE LAW OF JUDICIAL PRECEDEN'.rS OR 'J.'HE Sc~NCE OF CASE LAW. By Henry -Campbell Black, St. Paul: West Publishing Oompany, 1912. pp. xv 768. . -In view of the present widespread interest in the general question of the efficiency of the courts, and in view of the further fact !lihat ,there is a -dis-position, manifest in some quarters at least, to attribute the claimed l.ack of efficiency to the conservatism of both ,bench and 1bar, ,their unwillingness to ~djust themselves to .what may be caHed the "changing order," the publication of Mr. BJack's book is timely. •The task the author set for ·himself was "to write ,a real and complete treatise on the science of case law at once theoretical and practical" One may not be entirely dear as to the author's id'ea of a "real" tre.atise as dis-tinguished from some other sort of treatise, but our admiration is compelled for the courage of one who claims "eompleteness" in this day ,for his book on any topic of the law. We are persuaded, ·however, that our .author •has come nearer the accom-plishment of the appalling itask set •before him than any predecessor in this general field, and has given to the profession a very u:serul book • · There are: portions of the work, n'Ota:bly some parts involving more par-ticularly the historical .and.otheoretical phases of the general subject, ,which may have been as well done before. 'The discussion of the questions as to the authority of pre'Cedents as· •be-tween the courts of the same and different states, and between the different BOOK REVIEWS 245 State courts ,and the Fede.rat courts is well elaborated upon authority ,ample in citation. :The author disclaims any contention that •his citation of authorities is exhaustive, but his claim to have "gathered together a number of ex,amples great enough to serve all the purposes of a practical exp'osition of the ·subject and to supply the student with pertinent and useful citations" is well justified. 1/. H. L. Tm: PANAMA CANAI, CoNFI.ICT Bm:wttN GRtAT BRITAIN AND THt UNITtn STATts OF A1>ItRICA. By L. Oppenheim, M.A., LL.D., W1hewell Pro-fessor of Internation.al Law in the University of Cambridge. Cam--bridge: Cambridge University Press, se-cond edition, 1913, vi, 57. This short study, whose timeliness is attested by the f.act that a -second edi-tion ,has already ibeen -called for, comes from the hand of a leading English authority on international lar.v and constitutes verhaps the dearest statement of the British position in the controversy concerning the Panama •C,anal. In the large, it is a criticism of the memorandum which Presjdent Ta-ft append-ed to the Panama Canal Act upon giving it :bis -signature. -After a preliminary ' consideration of Article III of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, which is the ohief bone -0£ contention, ,the author proceeds to show that a construction of that article as a declaration on the part of the United 'State-s to grant "a condition-al favoured-nation •treatment'' to all nations is in conflict with the hisrorical facts lying back of the treaty in question- and •with the "general principle of neutralization," enunciated by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and reaffirmed !by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty. Attention is further <lr.awn to the "unheard-of _extension" of the term., "coasting-trade," by the United States, and it is inti-mated ·that any exemption in favor 10f this trade would for this reason result in a discrimination against the vessels of other nations. Evidently the erux of the whole controversy lies in the £,act that the Unit-e·d States •has acquired "dominium" as wen as "imperium" over the P.anama Canal Zone,-a contingency which is not e~plicitLy provided for iby the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty. It is perhaps -in view of this fact that some American 'Writers h.ave found it rather difficult to understand quite dearly -why the United States, in virtue of its internal sovereignty, is not <f:o grant subsidies to its own vessels,-by exemption ,from Canal tolls as ,well as otherwise, ,provided that the vroportionate tolls upon the vessels of other nations are not there]>y increased. This, baldl:y stated, is the British attitude. It is to be hoped thit, as Oppenheim suggests, the difference may be submitted to .arbitration as the most fitting method of solution, if diplomacy fails. H. E. Y. THt LAw OF CoMMtRCIAL ExcHANGts. By Chester Arthur Legg. Baker, Voor.his and Company, New York, 1913, pp. xxxiv. 38r. The ordinary legal practitioner would hardly have supposed that there was, today in the world of substantive law an unplowed part large enough to con-stitute a field of itself. Yet Mr. Legg has produced a !book of nearly 400 <pages on a branch of the law which appears not heretofore to ·have been the subject MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW of a t~xt-book Nor does the author seem to 1have padded this material for the purpose of filling a volume. His work is a comprehensive but exclusive discussion of the -powers, duties and liabilities of "Commercial !Exchanges,'' as associations of individuals, whether incorporated or otherwise, in relation to their own members, the public, and the State: Coming just ,when there is a renewal ,of agitation for the -enforced incor-poration of the New York Stock Exchange, its subject might be :Particularly timely. It does not, ihowever, deal at aU ,vith. the la,ws and regulations which particular exchanges have put into effect, or even as generally existing. ibut only witih the ["Ules which they may impose; and while it ,has some dis-cussion of the responsibility of the exchange to the State, if does not devote any space to treatment of the power of the State to make rutes and regulations actively controlling the conduct IOf exchanges and their members. In conse-quence, it is of interest only to those who are in some way immediately con-cerned with the exchanges or affected by their ,regulations. \As such persons. . are for the most part not lawyers, the author 1has, as he says, endeavored to avoid -purely technical discussion and legal .formulae so far as possible with-out injuring the book as primarily a l~gal treatise. 'The reviewer does not !be-lieve that legal writing, reasonably used, ·has a technical terminology or abstruse diction of its own, but, at any rate, the author has succeeded in put-ting his subject in a form that will not strain the comprehension of his read-ers, be they lay or~legal. :The book lhas an ~istorical introduction concerning the development of -COmmercial Exchanges which, though brief, is extremely interesting. Be-yond that, it will ·be of interest ·only to those directly concerned ,vith the rights and rules ,which such associations may enforce. J. B. W. 

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