Wood, Dr. Thomas J.

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CASES ON THE CONSTITUTION. By John P. Frank. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1951.

University of Miami School of Law

University of Miami Law SchoolInstitutional RepositoryUniversity of Miami Law Review2-1-1952CASES ON THE CONSTITUTION. By John P.Frank. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company,1951.Dr. Thomas J. WoodFollow this and additional works at: http://repository.law.miami.edu/umlrThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Miami LawReview by an authorized administrator of Institutional Repository. For more information, please contact library@law.miami.edu.Recommended CitationDr. Thomas J. Wood, CASES ON THE CONSTITUTION. By John P. Frank. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1951., 6 U. MiamiL. Rev. 276 (1952)Available at: http://repository.law.miami.edu/umlr/vol6/iss2/19MIAMI LAW QUARTERLYidleness, classification and grouping of prisoners arc just a few of its aspects.No panaceas are offered.For lawyers, this remarkable symposium has value. To the professionmost active in law-making, it shows needs, trends, problems and suggestedsolutions.THOMAS A. WILLS ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF LAWUNIVERSITY OF MIAMICASES ON THE CONSTITUTION. By John P. Frank. New York: McGraw-HillBook Company, 1951. Pp. XI, 339. $3.50.This is not a casebook for a law school course but as supplementaryreading for a number of undergraduate courses in government this selectionof cases by Professor Frank is the most satisfactory of the half dozen suchtexts known to this reviewer. The collection has two notable merits. First,its emphasis is on recent cases of current interest; of the sixty cases, appro-ximately three-quarters stem from the Roosevelt and Truman Courts. Part-icularly in an introductory course it is necessary to provide the student withillustrative material on contemporary problems if his interest is to be fullyaroused. The fact that but few of the earlier cases are represented (only nineare dated prior to 1900) does not mean that the historical background 'islacking, for Professor Frank has in his explanatory notes, which occupyalmost a third of the book, adequately set forth the background and thedoctrinal precedents. To this teacher this method is preferable to that ofgiving the classical cases and then using notes to explain the later develop-ments.The second merit lies in the emphasis on civil rights which ProfessorFrank uses as "a loose term to describe those liberties of the citizen in thefields of politics, religion, race relations and criminal law." This large pro-portion of civil rights cases can be explained in part by the fact that suchmatters have been the particular concern of the Roosevelt Court and tosome extent of the Truman Court. Another explanation is that with thedemise of substantive due process in 1937, constitutional limitations are nowconfined almost altogether to the political and personal liberties of the in-dividual. One may also believe that Professor Frank has given deliberateemphasis to these cases in a time when the political scene is largely dominat-ed by a race between some of our domestic zealots and the Russians todetermine which group will abolish our liberties. The opinions of the dis-senters in the recent freedom of expression cases may perhaps have someinfluence in counteracting the drive for national conformity which is tendingto produce a nation of political Milquetoasts.Professor Frank has broken away from the novel approach of his lawschool casebook in constitutional law in which the material was arrangedchronologically. Here he has divided the cases categorically although notBOOK REVIEWSobserving the traditional arrangements. His first chapter is devoted to illus-trating the functions of the several branches as well as throwing some lighton interstate relations. In the second chapter he turns briefly to the powersof Congress -commerce, fiscal, war and foreign affairs. The third chapterdeals with limitations on economic regulation in terms of the commerceclause and the due process and equal protection clauses. Civil rights occupythe final two chapters.The introductory material is perhaps the least successful part of thebook although admittedly it is difficult to compress sixty cases and notesthereon together with a meaningful introduction into some three hundredpages. Professor Frank in a dozen pages touches briefly on the origin of thecourt, its business and some of its justices. There is lacking a discussion of theseveral theories of constitutional interpretations, e.g. Justice Roberts' mech-anical theory of the AAA case, which might aid the student in understandingthe divergences between the majority and minority. The change in the natureof the business of the Court is treated well, but the explanation of how itgets its business is scarcely adequate.The interpretive notes on the cases are often masterful summaries of thepast cases and of the competing values involved as, for instance, in thesearch and seizure section. The Court's reluctance to decide "political ques-tions," especially those in which it would be called upon to order someaction, is better handled in a few paragraphs than some have been able toaccomplish in a full article. Another particularly enlightening note concernsthe first Amendment and the government's recent policy "of limiting theeconomic opportunities of those whose speech is offensive to the nation".In a book so recent as to include excerpts from the Dennis case decidedin June 1951 the absence of certain other recent cases is to be remarked. Thecase illustrating interstate compacts is Hindelider v. La Plata Company;no mention is made of Dyer Y. Sims in which the Court undertook to putsome 'teeth in the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Compact. Similarlythe treaty power section illustrated by the classic, Missouri v. Holland, omitsreference to Sei Fujii v. California which, although still in the lower courts,has implications so great that they threaten to overshadow the older case.No casebook author can satisfy everyone and to show that ProfessorFrank is no exception this writer ventures to point out that freedom ofpress versus right to a fair trial has been omitted. The weighing of the com-peting values, as illustrated by Justice Frankfurter's opinion in the memo-randum decision on the Baltimore Radio Show case, is as difficult and im-portant as in the other civil rights fields. Others may find their favoritesomitted but on the whole it is an excellent selection and with the valuableinterpretive material may be used profitably in the class room as well as bystudents of public affairs.DR. TiIOMAS J. WOOD ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENTUNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

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CASES ON THE CONSTITUTION. By John P. Frank. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1951.

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