The Progress of the Law than in any state in this country.
Law
and equity have become practically blended so far as they can be, and under the rules of procedure made by the courts, questions of practice which take up so much of the time of our appellate courts are almost unknown. It was said by a distinguished English judge some twenty years ago that it could be asserted with out contradiction that it is impossible
for an honest litigant to be defeated by any technicality, any slip or misdirected step in the litigation, for the law has ceased to be a scientific game which may
be won or lost by playing some particu lar move. We find, therefore, that in the prompt ness and efficiency of their judicial sys
tem in the enforcement of public and private rights, we are in the United States far, far behind England and her
colonies, and indeed, any country of the civilized world.
Our constitutions con
tain the guarantee of Magna Carta, that justice shall be administered without sale, denial or delay, and yet justice is delayed, sometimes for years, in
the courts of our states and in the fed eral courts. In my own state, that of Missouri, despite the organization of intermediate appellate courts, our Su preme Court is some three years and over behind its docket. More than this, not
infrequently cases duly submitted are held under advisement without decision
563
In seeking to remedy this admitted inefficiency or our American judicial system, the American Bar Association has recommended that the whole judi
cial power of the state, at least for civil causes, shall be vested in one great court, of which all the tribunals shall be branches of divisions, that being in effect the English system. The plan
contemplated such a reorganization of the judicial system as to prevent not merely needless waste of time, but to prevent all duplications of records, and the like, thus obviating the expense to the litigant and cost to the public. While there is great merit in the suggestion,
the difficulty lies deeper than in any matter relating to the formal constitu tion of our courts. Those who have followed the course of English tribunals are very much im pressed with the rarity of questions of pleading and practice, even in the trial courts, and their almost entire absence
from the courts of appeal. Such ques tions as are frequent in the courts of appeal in this country, as to whether exceptions were properly saved to the rulings of the court, whether matter
appears in the bill of exceptions which should have appeared in the record proper, or in the record, which should have been matter of exception, are prac tically unknown in England Those who have attended criminal trials in England are very much im
for months and even years. Our experi ence, I am told, is not exceptional in this regard, but that substantially the same conditions exist in many of the states of
jurors, we are told, are as rare as chal
the Union.
lenges of judges are in this country.
It is true that criminal ap
pressed with the contrast with such trials in this country. Challenges of
peals are not subject to the same delay
Furthermore, both in civil and in crim
in hearing in the appellate courts; but
inal trials, questions of evidence are
even in such cases, the delays incident
extremely rare; while in this country, in a contested trial, they are almost
to reversals and retrials on account of technical defects'in procedure are a re proach to the administration of the law and are fast becoming a national scandal.
incessant. In an address to the Minnesota Bar Association in 1906, Judge Amidon of
