J. O. BURKE.

The Constitutional Doctrines of Justice Harlan. By Floyd Barzilia Clark, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Political Science in Pennsylvania State College.  Series XXXIII, No. 4, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science under the direction of the Department of History, Political Economy, and Political Science.  The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1915.

This work is a legal treatise consisting of a scholarly discussion of the doctrines advanced by Justice Harlan during his service as a member of the Supreme Court of the United States.  The book opens with a brief biography of the jurist, emphasizing the important events of his career to furnish a basis for the study of his theories.  The author then takes up such topics as the “Suability of States,” the “Impairment of the Obligation Contracts,” “Due Process of Law,” “Interstate and Foreign Commerce,” “Equal Protection of the Laws,” the “Jurisdiction of Courts,” “Miscellaneous Topics,” and “Judicial Legislation.”

The author finds that in the treatment of these important legal questions Harlan measures up to the standard of an able jurist.  Replying to those who have charged him with emphasizing too greatly the letter of the law, the writer says that such a contention is based on ignorance or prejudice.  “No one who so interpreted the Eleventh Amendment,” says the author, “as to maintain that a suit against the officer of a State in his official capacity was not a suit against a State could have held to the strict letter of the law.”  The author further contends that this criticism of the jurist arises from the fact that he did not believe in equivocation.

The interpretation of the laws relating to the Negro, the point on which he dissented from the majority of the members of the court, should have been given more prominence in this discussion.  The discriminations against the Negroes are treated in connection with the chapters on “Interstate and Foreign Commerce” and “Equal Protection of the Laws.”  The Fourteenth Amendment is treated along with such miscellaneous topics as “Direct Taxation,” “Copyrights,” “Insular Cases,” “Interstate Comity,” and “Labor Legislation.”  Stating Justice Harlan’s theory as to the position the Negro should occupy in this country, however, the author writes very frankly.  Harlan, he thought, believed that they should occupy the position that historically they were intended to occupy by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.  He believed that the law should be interpreted as it was meant and not as the court thought expedient and wise.  “Though it may be true that his relation to the negro in political matters may have made him more violent in his dissents, any one who will look fairly at the question must conclude that his doctrine was legally correct.  And as time passes, and as both classes become better educated and broader in their views, it may be said that the tendency of the court is likely to be to interpret the laws largely as he thought they should have been interpreted, that is, as historically they were meant.”