[In the following excerpt, the reviewer finds Adams's methodology in The Theory of Social Revolutions flawed but intellectually stimulating.]

This work [The Theory of Social Revolutions] while filled with errors and hasty generalizations, possesses the quality of stimulating thought. Mr. Adams' primary contention is one against judicial authority in political matters. He contends that "no court can, because of the nature of its being, effectively check a popular majority acting through a coördinate legislative assembly. . . . The only result of an attempt and failure is to bring courts of justice into odium or contempt, and in any event to make them objects of attack by a dominant social force in order to use them as an instrument. . . . Hence in periods of change, when alone serious clashes between legislatures and courts are likely to occur, as the social equilibrium shifts the legislature almost certainly will reflect the rising, the court the sinking power" (pp. 76, 77).

Mr. Adams regards the courts as properly a group of passionless persons administering a body of abstract principles (pp. 76, 81), and insists that our system has made the courts largely bodies for the registration in law of the dominant economic and social interests of the community (pp. 89-131). "In fine," he says, "whenever pressure has reached a given intensity, on one pretext or another, courts have enforced or dispensed with constitutional limitations with quite as much facility as have legislatures, and for the same reasons." In this view the author is to a large extent right, as he is also in the position that courts must in the long run fail whenever they seek to interpose constitutional barriers against legislation approved by the better judgment of the community (p. 111).

The author assumes that "those who, at any given time, are the strongest in any civilization, will be those who are at once the ruling class, those who own most property, and those who have most influence on legislation" (p. 132). Capitalism, in his view, has been this dominant force in the community, and now as it is losing its power, seeks to entrench itself behind political courts. Mr. Adams thinks that such a policy may prove disadvantageous to capital, in that with a change of power, the political court will be employed as an instrument against capital itself. This contention he seeks to illustrate by a lengthy discussion of political tribunals during the French revolution.

Mr. Adams is probably correct in his contentions that our courts have too much political power and that such power will tend to be employed in the manner approved by the dominant sentiment of the community at any one time. But he seems to be clearly in error in regarding law as properly a body of abstract principles divorced from political principles and administered by a group of passionless persons. So long as society is developing, law also must develop, and in any system of government those who administer the law will be influenced by social changes and will themselves serve to some extent at least as instruments for the adaptation of law to those changes. A system of courts absolutely free from political and social influences would be equally as harmful as a system dominated by such influences.