sides so far that the interests of society have not been adequately safeguarded. If laymen have erred in concentrating on minor points, lawyers have been far too ready to deny laymen any right to discuss law at all. It is just as if school-teachers should maintain that parents and citizens in general have no concern in the problems of education. The time has come to close the gulf in American life between the legal profession and the people who are ruled by laws. Law is the surface of contact where the pressure of society bears upon the individual. Doubtless, he attributes to the law many of the features in this pressure to which he objects, whereas they actually result from the social structure itself. The man who feels wronged by a prosecution for bigamy, or for stealing bread when he is starving for lack of employment, cannot expect to change the law without also changing the views of the community on monogamous marriage and the organization of industry. These institutions of society show themselves in the law just as the veins in a block of marble show themselves at the surface, but it is as futile for him to blame the law for “capitalism,” private property, or our present semi-permanent marriages as to try to get rid of the veins by scraping the surface of the marble. On the other hand, there are aspects of law which do not correspond to any existing social requirements or demands, and the layman has good cause to offer his opinion. And it may be worth listening to. The onlooker often sees most of the game. Although the layman may lack technical knowledge, he can appreciate the relation of law to his own department of human activity--business, social service, health--in ways that are difficult for the lawyer who is absorbed in the pressing tasks of each day. Moreover, the lawyer’s habitual and necessary obligation to conform to existing laws naturally inclines him to overlook their defects, which are obvious to those who can spend in detached criticism the same time which he requires for practical application. Modern medicine was created by Pasteur, who was not a doctor; modern English law by Bentham, who was a lawyer to the extent of arguing one case and who was edited by Mill, a philosopher and economist.