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THE GREEN BAG
of the monoply and of the trust, and the social power of the trust magnate over the judge is as much feared by them as is the social power of the employing classes by the laboring man. When Mr. Thomas Lawson in one of his articles included in a list of precepts supposed by him to guide the con duct of the Standard Oil Company one "Never to forget that our legal department is paid by the year and our land is full of courts and judges, " he voiced a sentiment which unfortunately is only too prevalent. Equally prevalent too is the sentiment expressed in the unrestrained remarks of the lawyer iconoclast of Chicago, when in a recent address he said; "Decisions are made and bound in sheepskin. We lawyers burrow in dust to find out what some fool judge said a thousand years ago . . . and then we have the law . . . Take a poor man with a poor lawyer ... a case argued with a giant on one side and a pygmy on the other, and the judge hearing the case whose asso ciations have been with the rich. What show has the poor fellow got? Nobody is crooked or dishonest; it is just the natural course of evolution that has made the law of to-day. You can't get into court for nothing. Even if you could, you couldn't get along by yourself. You must have a lawyer. You can have any kind of a lawyer you can pay for. But you can't try your own case. You don't know how. The judge won't help you. He sits there to umpire the game and nothing else; it's all a lottery. If your case is just, that counts nothing. It depends upon a dozen things which make dice shaking a certainty com pared with your game of chance. There is only one true thing about it, you always get a run for your money, as long as you have got any there is another court. There is no effort in the courts to get at abstract Justice. It's merely a method that has been evolved through the ages for keeping society as it is." Even among the trading and professional classes, indeed, there is everywhere to be found the conviction that our lawyers and
our judges are behind the age; that they fail to recognize the basic needs of a growing civilization; that they are shrouded in a formalism; that the letter of the law killeth and that it is the bench and the bar who are responsible for this letter. The rash and incautious statements of men of note have added to this feeling. When the chief executive of the nation openly criticizes a Federal judge on account of a decision rendered by him on a technical point of law, what confidence in the judiciary can be expected of the great masses of the people? Unfortunately, English precedents are of but little value to us. The English judge interprets no constitution. He merely con strues and applies the statutes. In England parliament is a legislative body and a con stitutional convention in one, and its man dates are final. The English parliament controls the English courts and not the English courts the English parliament. If it were true in America as it is in England, that our judges did not have imposed upon them or had not assumed to themselves the decision of all of our great political questions and economic and industrial policies, the case would be very different. As long, how ever, as the contrary is the case, that is to say as long as our written constitutions are looked upon as the fundamental law of the land, their amendment is so difficult as to be almost impracticable, and their interpreta tion is entrusted to our judiciary, the judi cial office must of necessity be more or less political, and permanence of tenure and appointment as opposed to election will be vigorously assailed by a large portion of the American people. Longer terms of office and larger salaries will no doubt be soon generally conceded in the several states, but life term state judiciaries will, it is believed only be acquiesced in when the judges by constitutional amendments are deprived of the power to exercise or by their own volition cease to exercise the political and legislative powers which they assume to-day. Grand Forks, North Dakota, October, 1907.
