334 LAW AND JUSTICE 



them out to the bitter end. There is nothing to regret in this no denial of justice, 

 though the lawyers may suffer in pocket. But this and other problems will, it is to be 

 hoped, be solved by the lately appointed Royal Commission on the administration of 

 justice. The existing English procedure in civil cases leaves much to be desired. There 

 are too many interlocutory proceedings, too many appeals, a want of uniformity. Why 

 should proceedings commence sometimes with a writ, sometimes with an originating 

 summons? Expert witnesses are an enormous expense to the parties, and generally 

 contradict one another. Why should not the Court have a list of assessors engineers, 

 merchants, doctors, architects, chemists and others whom it can summon to its aid, 

 just as it now does Brethren of the Trinity House in Admiralty cases, and Bishops or 

 other Church dignitaries in ecclesiastical cases? 



Hearing in Camera. The English divorce case of Scott v. Scott in 1912 raised an 

 interesting new question as to the effect of an order for hearing in camerd. A lady 

 instituted a suit for nullity of marriage. The case was ordered to be heard in camerd, 

 and in the result the Court made a decree on the ground of the husband's impotence. 

 The ex-wife thereupon to show that she was the aggrieved party sent a transcript of 

 the shorthand notes taken at the hearing to her father and sister. For this alleged 

 violation of the secrecy of the hearing a motion was made to commit her for contempt, 

 and Mr. Justice Bargrave Deane held that the publication did constitute a gross con- 

 tempt. The lady appealed, and was met by a preliminary objection that the order was 

 in a " criminal matter " and not appealable. The case was heard before the full Court 

 of Appeal, with the result that four Judges held the preliminary objection good: two 

 dissented, and of the latter one Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton (now Lord Moulton) 

 delivered a very striking judgment. In his opinion the order related to the hearing and 

 the hearing only, and when that was concluded its effect was at an end. There was 

 therefore no contempt by the lady in what had been done, and he pointed out the 

 danger to the administration of justice if the Court the guardian of the liberty of the 

 subject itself encroached on that liberty. Hearing in camerd, it must be remembered, 

 is ordered not only to avoid the scandal of indecent evidence being given in public, but 

 because such evidence often cannot be obtained at all except in private. 



Recent Legal Literature. A book of great value now nearing completion is The Commercial 

 Laws of the World. Here we have the Lex Mercatoria grown into a library of fifteen massive 

 volumes, the mustard-seed into a tree overshadowing the whole earth. 



In Professor Maitland's Collected Papers we have had another book of remarkable interest, 

 the gleanings of the rich harvest of F. W. Maitland's genius. Maitland as his editor 

 Mr. Fisher well says was not only "a great discoverer in history," but an "incomparable 

 populariser of his own and other men's knowledge." 



A notable work is the 2nd edition of Burge's Colonial and Foreign Law, under the editor- 

 ship of Mr. Justice Wood Renton and Mr. G. G. Phillimore. The scope and thoroughness 

 of this work is illustrated in the latest volume, which is entirely devoted to marriage and 

 divorce and contains a detailed survey of the law 'systems of nearly all civilized nations. 

 The voluminous Laws of England, proceeding under the auspices of Lord Halsbury, is a 

 notable achievement for comprehensiveness and accuracy; and second editions of the Ency- 

 clopaedia of the Laws of England and the Encyclopaedia of Scots Law show the apprecia- 

 tion which those works have met with. A work of remarkable erudition is Buckland's 

 Roman Law of Slavery, and with it may be coupled the Master of Balliol's Criminal Law 

 of Rome. 



The Great Jurists of the World, appearing under the auspices of the Society of Comparative 

 Legislation, is a collection of articles contributed to the Journal of the Society by a number 

 of distinguished lawyers. It should help to form the basis of a history of jurisprudence a 

 history teaching by examples. 



A new departure which promises well is the establishment at Berlin of an International 

 Institute for a Bibliography of Jurisprudence. The Institute will deal not only with books 

 but with periodical literature. A great amount of valuable work is in these days buried and 

 lost in periodicals and fugitive pamphlets, such as Sir Erie Richards's recent Lecture on the 

 "Sovereignty of the Air," or Sir John Macdonell's "Historical Trials." 



In connection with legal bibliography, a good idea comes from New York in the shape of a 

 Guide to German Law. Popularly it may be described as "German Law and where to find 

 it." It is the first of a series, admirably planned and ably executed, designed to constitute 

 a library of comparative law. 



