Many of those in the enthusiastic audiences expressed regret that Love in Our Time could not move uptown to Broadway. Had the play been produced on Broadway, certainly it would have received the benefit of many valuable suggestions, both dramatic or technical and psychological and sociological. But I strongly suspect that when such a play can be produced, without protest from the puritans and without action by the police, in a major Broadway theatre, it will be time to make some drastic changes in dialogue and action, for there is no doubt that such production will in and of itself be proof that much of the argument of Love in Our Time is no longer valid, much of its message no longer needed.

THE LAW

THE COMMON LAW NOTIONS OF DECENCY IN CALIFORNIA

Donald Webster Cory

The notion of common law decency is found in a welter of cases touching on many phases of the law. It has a chameleon-like quality which wavers with the changing temper of society. It also manifests an artificial character, a creature of the law, which is more permanent and has its origin in the immemorial institutions of the race. Actions involving a nuisance often have to do with the notion of decency. But in my opinion those actions which a famous authority describes as crimes against God show it most clearly. Indeed, some offenses may be classed either as nuisances or as crimes against God. On the first blush, a reading of all such cases gives one the impression that the archetype of the modern common law notion of decency is very unlike its offspring. We see how this artificial creature of the law somehow goes back to a social groundswell, an enthousiasmos in which things become more intimate and more akin. These are veritable crimes against God. Certainly we find nothing in the common law of the subject which has to do with polite feelings. The primitive notion relates rather to propriety than to feeling. And the point cannot be too strongly brought home that this primitive notion is still in force in the common law of California. Our authority tells us that there are principally three crimes against God, heresy, witchcraft, sodomy. The legal conceptions in all of these offenses are still to be found in the law of California, but in two of the cases the milieu has changed and they are assimilated to other branches of law. It was not the offenses themselves, however, which courts were so much concerned with, but they were jealous of the proprieties of the realm, and avenged any violation of propriety no matter what the act might be. In most cases evidently they did not regard heresy, witchcraft, or sodomy as a crime. Statutes were required to cover

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