Every student of the law must be equipped with certain fundamental concepts and with certain terms in which to express them. Let him read the federal Constitution or the opinion of any court or any legal treatise, or let him listen to the lecture of any law professor, and every sentence will be likely to bristle with rights and duties, powers, privileges, liabilities, and immunities. He will gradually realize also that these terms are frequently used loosely, each term often being used to express several distinct concepts, and he will find that our dictionaries merely record this wide and variable usage and aid little toward the clear expression essential to exact reasoning. No doubt the beginner cannot be made to realize at once the disadvantages attendant upon variableness of terms and uncertainty of concept. But it is quite possible at the very outset to master a number of fundamental legal concepts and to acquire a single definite meaning for each of the terms used to express them. With such simple concepts and definite phraseology the student can more easily analyze a complex problem, arrive at a correct solution, and explain it clearly to others., He can thus be led to avoid much unnecessary obscurity and difficulty. As his experience increases he must test for himself the accuracy and usefulness of the analysis and terminology. The following definitions are offered, chiefly for the benefit of beginning students of the law, in order to-assist in establishing an exact terminology and a definiteness and accuracy of mental concept. These definitions are in large part based upon the articles of Professor Wesley N. Hohfeld, referred to below. I. FACT: This is a world of facts. Physical existence and physical relations are facts. Our mental processes are facts. The existence of any legal relation is a fact. All changes and variations are facts. Facts include acts and events. II. AcT: An act-is one of that class of facts manifest to the senses that consists of voluntary physical movements (muscular contractions that are willed) of human beings. A forbearance is a consciously willed absence of physical movement. Animals other than men can act or forbear, but they do not become parties to a legal relation. III. EVENT: Any change in the existing totality of facts, including the acts of human beings. Prepared with the critical assistance of other members of the Yale Law Faculty.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 209.175.73.10 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 18:33:14 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEWS THE EFFECT OF WAR ON CONTRACTS. By George J. Webber. London: The Solicitors' Law Stationery Society, 1946. 2d ed. Pp. 802. ?3 17s 6d.THE first edition of this work was published in 1940. Within six years a new edition, "three times as large as the first," has been made desirable, partly by the developments caused by the recent war, partly by a number of decisions in the House of Lords reversing some views that had generally prevailed, and partly because of the author's desire to make a more thorough and critical review of the field. This edition well deserves a full review on its own merits.In a foreword by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, this work is described as "essentially a practitioner's book"; but there is no less reason for describing it as a book for law students, law professors, and judges. They will find here a thorough and critical review of great numbers of court decisions, with a full statement of the facts and a full and fair exposition of the reasoning of the judges; they will find also a presentation of the theories of legal scholars as well as the author's original analysis of problems and matured views on questions of policy.The book is especially useful to American lawyers because nowhere else is so complete a picture of English case law available and because to a very considerable extent American case law and theory are stated for comparison. The fact that British statutes and administrative orders are continually referred to is not a defect from the American standpoint; for the same problems are dealt with in our own statutes and orders, and comparison is profitable. Not many decisions of our state courts are cited. The book is divided into four Parts. Of these, Part I contains chapters on the Duration and Termination of War, Emergency Powers, Who is an Enemy, Contracts with an Enemy, and Procedural Capacity of EnemyAliens. With all of these our courts have been and will continue to be frequently concerned. Part II deals with the effect of war on specific kinds of Commercial Contracts, including Agency, Corporate Shareholders, Sales, Negotiable Instruments, Insurance, Freight, and Service.Parts III and IV fill much more than half of the book and deal with the subject of Frustration of Contract. It is here that the greatest contribution of the author is found; and it is to this that the reviewer will direct his specific comment.When a court holds that a contractor's duty is discharged by impossibility of performance or by frustration of object, the explanation commonly made has been that the contractor's duty is impliedly conditioned on the...

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No. 3-ASSIGNMENT OF CONTRACT RIGHTS This subject has been much discussed under the heading "alienability of choses in action." In continuing the discussion our first step should be to abandon altogether the term "chose in action." Its linguistic construction is faulty, in that its individual words lead one to think of something very different from that which the expression as a whole now denotes. There is no "chose" or thing or rcs. There is a right (or claim): against some person. In this article we shall speak in terms of rights (or claims) and not about "choses." It is even more important that we should cease to use such a phrase as "assignment of contract." Whatever definition we choose for the word "contract," it is not possible to construct accurate rules by the use of such a phrase. If a contract is defined as consisting of the facts operating to create a binding obligation-offer, acceptance, consideration, etc.-these facts are merely a part of recorded history and surely cannot be assignedL It is meaningless to speak of assigning a past event. If a contract is defined as a promise enforceable at law, we are merely placing emphasis upon one of the operative facts and indicating that it is in fact operative. A promise is merely a past event and cannot properly be said to be assignable by the promisee; much less can a promise be assigned by the promisor who made it, and it would be equally erroneous to say that either party to a bilateral contract can assign both promises. If contract is defined as de-(207)

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