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The Green Bag
humane and tolerant side of the crimi nal law. The probation system requires sound discretion in determining when harsh ness and leniency can best be used. Judge Cleland of the Chicago Municipal Court has been censured by his asso ciates on the bench for the way he has exercised this discretion. One of the charges brought against him is that of demanding excessive bail. A Lithuan ian, for example, who had frequently been in court before, was brought before Judge Cleland drunken and repulsive, with a destitute wife and two starving children beside him. Doubtless with the object of startling this drunken man into some sense of fear of the law, and to jostle him into a realization of the plight of his homeless family, Judge Cleland held him for $10,000 bail. It was a breach of the man's constitutional rights, yet when the man came out from jail he did not get drunk again, and he so improved in the struggle to regain his manhood that he came to regard Judge Cleland as his best friend on earth. A judge may in the same breath be censured for resorting to drastic meas ures and for employing measures not sufficiently rigorous, as in the case of Judge Cleland, but we have to make allowance for the fallibility of the human mind in perplexing predicaments, and if we demand of judges extrajudicial attainments and patience, we must not comment too severely upon their extra judicial acts or abuses of their discre tion in the interest of humanity. If Judge Cleland has placed 1100 cases on probation during his thirteen months in the Maxwell street Court, and his fellow judges are scandalized, it looks as if the lack of a good probation law was quite as much to blame as any shortcomings of the judge. We under
stand that Judge Cleland's associates introduced one bill into the Illinois Senate and Judge Cleland another, both aimed at establishing a satisfactory pro bation system, and that the two meas ures were so diametrically opposed that in the words of Rev. Dr. William E. Barton they stood a good chance of killing each other like the Kilkenny cats. It is a pity if the Judges cannot unanimously agree on a bill. The prevention of crime depends largely upon the prudence of the bench in enforcing the discipline of courts of law and the keen sensitiveness of law yers to their responsibilities as officers of the court. The criminal law is an institution which must be as effectively administered by the civil authorities as any other department of public affairs. Civil society has given an illustration of this fact recently in the Rudowitz case. This poor exiled Russian, leading in this country the life of a law-abiding citizen, whom the United States has refused to extradite for a political offense, is an object-lesson to his nation of the majesty of the criminal law as something higher than mere regulations defining political offenses. His countrymen in these United States should be inspired with the spirit which is opposed to that of anarchy and lawlessness. This same inspiration should come to all our people in whose eyes the criminal law acquires new sanctity from the wisdom with which it is upheld by officials charged with the administration of justice.
THE SLOGAN OF THE REFORMER Let us abolish corporations, injunc tions, the tariff, interstate commerce, stocks and bonds, trust companies, rail roads, the United States Senate, and the United States Supreme Court, in order that we may uphold the sacred
