The Code of Civil Procedure does not in express terms authorize the revocation or annullment of adoption, but there can be no doubt that it may be done by a Court of First Instance for material causes such as fraud,' want of consent, and the like. CONCLUSION 8 Such in brief are the most salient points of the Spanish and American adoption laws. Naturally there are similarities and differences, most of which is due to the entirely different conception of the nature and effect of adoption. As is to be expected there are many points on which the law does not lay down clear and explicit rules; these have been supplemented by deductions drawn from a study of the various parts, and by the doctrines laid down in decided cases. Each, of course, has its advantages over the other, but taking as a whole, it may perhaps be said that the Spanish law is better because, by restricting the persons who may adopt, and by confining in very narrow limits the effects of adoption, it tends to preserve, as all laws should, the inherent and paramount rights of the legitimate descendants and other blood relatives of the adopter to the latter's affection and succession. Again, if adoptions are to be encouraged in order to benefit those whose natural parents are not in a position to give them the proper education, and other opportunities to rise in the world, and prove useful to their country and fellowmen, then poorly indeed does the American law serve the purpose, because it discourages adoptions by imposing on the adopter the burdensome duty of placing the adopted on an equality with his own children, and in a higher level than his own parents and kinsmen. 1 Tucker v. Fisk, 154 Mass., 574; 28 N. E., 1051. 21 Cyc., 929. PHILIPPINE LAW JOURNAL Published monthly, August to April inclusive, during the academic year, by the alumni and students of the College of Law, University of the Philippines. FACULTY ADVISORY COMMITTEE Jorge Bocobo, Dean of the College of Law. Quintin Paredes, Professorial Lecturer on Criminal Law. Enrique Altavas, Lecturer on Land Registration and Mortgages. APRIL, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN NOTE AND COMMENT RAMÓN R. SAN JOSÉ, Senior Editor THE JUDICIAL SUPERINTENDENT IN CHINA This is the title of an interesting piece of legal literature written by Hon. Charles Sumner Lobingier, Judge of the United States Court for China, and published in XII Illinois Law Review, 403 (January, 1918). Undoubtedly it sounds new to your ears, gentle reader, the name of Judicial Superintendent. For it is but one of the improvements in the legal machinery recently proposed by the new pragmatic school of law reformers. According to Dean John H. Wigmore, the Judicial Superintendent is he "who shall have the power and the duty to inquire into each and every sort of botch-product of our justice system, and to take measures to improve it against the recurrence of such failures. When the people bring themselves to permitting and demanding such an innovation, they will be in a fair way of getting substantial improvements in their justice, but not before then." "It is rather curious," says Judge Lobingier, "to find this idea expressed in concrete and practical form in some congressional legislation of a dozen years ago;" for on June 30, 1906, the Congress of the United States passed an act creating the United States Court for China, giving it original jurisdiction in the most important causes previously cognizable in consular courts with power to hear appeals from all judgments of the latter. Besides these powers, the judge of the United States Court for China was given "a supervisory jurisdiction in all probate and administration causes whether appealed or not." "Here then," Judge Lobingier concludes, "we have the Judicial Superintendent in fact if not in name, with the power and duty to inquire into each and every important act of the primary courts, to require reports from them and to frame the rules by which they shall operate." AMERICAN CONSULS IN CHINA How this new legal idea may work out in practice may be gathered from a retrospective glance at American legal history in the Far East. The United States was the first nation to commission a consul in China, for as early as 1790 Major Samuel Shaw was appointed by President Washington as American consul at Canton. But few were the Americans who were at that time residing in China on account of the impracticability to live and conduct business under the then existing Chinese laws. "The Chinese authorities, too, found it annoying and often embarrassing to decide questions and dispose of cases involving the rights of foreigners and desired to be relieved of the whole burden." EXTRA-TERRITORIALITY: CONSULAR COURTS The solution to this difficult problem was found in the system known as ExtraTerritoriality, which was adopted by China. Foreigners were then accorded by this system "the same legal status as if living in their own country and the authorities of each treaty-making power were made responsible for punishing crime and administering justice among their own nationals." For the United States this arrangement with China was carried out by the treaty of July 3, 1844, signed at Wanghia, a suburb of Macao. Article XII of that treaty provided that "Citizens of the United States who may commit any crime in China shall be subject to be tried and punished only by the consul, or other public functionary of the United States, thereto authorized, according to the laws of the United States." And Article XXV of the same declared that "all questions in regard to rights, whether of property or person, arising between citizens of the United States in China, shall be subject to the jurisdiction of, and regulated by the authorities of, their own government. And all controversies occurring in China between citizens of the United States and the subjects of any other government shall be regulated by the treaties existing between the United States and such governments, respectively, without interference on the part of China." This extensive responsibility was committed to the American consul, and, as he became thereby a judge, the consular court was brought into existence. Its jurisdiction as to subjectmatter was unlimited until the United States Court for China was created in 1906, and since then the consular courts could only exercise jurisdiction "in civil cases where the sum or value of the property involved in the controversy does not exceed five hundred dollars United States money and in criminal cases where the punishment or the offense charged cannot exceed by law one hundred dollars fine or sixty days' imprisonment, or both, and shall have power to arrest, examine, and discharge accused persons or commit them to the said court." THE UNITED STATES COURT FOR CHINA Judge Lobingier says, "As American interests in the Far East gradually expanded it became apparent that the important and far-reaching judicial power which the nation had acquired there should be exercised, or at least supervised, by those trained especially for that purpose. Our ministers and consuls doubtless made the best of a difficult situation but they were laymen as a rule and it was not to be expected that they should find themselves at home in the technical field of law." Various attempts were made for the appointment of men versed in legal matters, but all of them met failure. Finally in March, 1906, Congressman Edwin Denby, son of a former Minister to China, introduced his bill which provided for the creation of the United States Court for China. It was approved by Congress and became a law. Mr. Denby, commenting on the conception and purpose of his measure, has said that he "thought of our United States judge as much in the light of an ancillary, unofficial ambassador of the United States, as of a judge of a court for the trial of cases in cases in which Americans were concerned." "Thus," Judge Lobingier continues, "to Dean Wigmore's conception of a Judicial Superintendent must be added Mr. Denby's unofficial ambassador if we would comprehend the purposes which underlay the creation of the United States Court for China." This Court is "a part of the federal judicial system corresponding in grade mainly to the district courts but taking cognizance of certain causes (such as probate, divorce, and adoption) which, in America, are entertained only by the state courts. The court is considered as located in the ninth judicial circuit and appeals lie from it to the court of appeals sitting at San Francisco, California. The test of jurisdiction over the person in this extra-territorial court is the nationality of the defendant. Anyone may be a plaintiff but there must be a defendant subject to American authority in order to confer jurisdiction." The writer concludes his instructive article by saying that "both United States and consular courts exist in order to serve Americans in China and those who deal with them. The measure of their success is the degree of serviceability attained, and in this respect their founders anticipated and applied an ideal which is only just now being diffused by the most advanced school of law reformers in America."-R. S. J. THE SELECTIVE DRAFT ACT OF THE UNITED STATES Important and far-reaching in its consequences is the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Arver v. United States, recently decided, upholding the validity of the Selective Draft Act of Congress of May 18, 1917. Various citizens, the plaintiffs in error, were called under said statute to present themselves for registration, and having failed to do so were prosecuted and convicted for the penalties provided therein. In the appeal they first contended that although it is theoretically true that the government has the power to raise armies, it is not concretely so, because, as compelled military service is repugnant to a free government and in conflict with all the great guaranties of the Consitution as to individual liberty, it must be assumed that the authority to raise armies depends alone upon the willingness of the citizen to do his duty in time of public need." To dispose of this objection, Chief Justice White said, that "it may not be doubted that the very conception of a just government and its duty to the citizen includes the reciprocal obligation of the citizen to render military service in case of need and the right to compel it." The decision then goes into a detailed historical review of this power to raise armies as it existed in England and as it developed in the United States up to the present time. Then follows a discussion as to whether the right to call armies should lie in the states and not in the central government as contended by the plaintiffs in error. The opinion says that the right of Congress to call on the states to call for their militia did not and does not curb the full potentiality of the power to exercise the right to raise armies. The decision then goes on holding that the act does not violate any of the constitutional rights as granted in the Amendments to the Constitution and ends thus: "Finally, as we are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation as the result of a war declared by the great representative body of the people can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude, in violation of the prohibitions of the 13th Amendment, we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement."-A. L. RECENT CASES (Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.) CONFLICT OF LAWS; CONTRACTS OF MARRIED WOMEN; LAWS OF DOMICILE OF WIFE TO GOVERN GUARANTY OF HUSBAND'S DEBT IN ANOTHER STATE.-The defendant was sued on a continuing guaranty made in Chicago by her in favor of two promissory notes made by her husband in Chicago. By the Illinois law, the wife might be bound, but by the Texas law, the lex domicilii, the guaranty was void. The question being as to what law is to govern, Held; That the Texas law, the law of the forum, is to govern. "It is extravagant to suppose," the court says, "that the courts of that place (domicile) will help a married woman to make her property there liable in circumstances in which the local law says that |