Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/471

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The Green Bag

pressed will of the people or to prevent litigation from succeeding on its merits is a social enemy, engaged in loosening the cement which holds society together, an anarchist compared with whom the Russian type is a supporter of the established order. What more convinc ing guaranty can the aroused profession give of its determined purpose to render efficient service to the people than will ingness to give generously and unselfishly of its means or of its time and effort in order that it may perfect its powers, concentrate its will, and in all ways prepare its membership for the highest forms of service to which it may be called? With this confidence alone will come the opportunity for a true law reform in the United States which may readily transcend the English in juridical effectiveness. With the personal inter ests in litigation properly subordinated

to the social, trials elevated from the level of an unscrupulous private duel to that of a serious search for truth, the common experience of the jury and the special training of the judge placed equally at the service of justice, power coupled with definite responsibility and always devoted to the public interest, we may in time, through the higher ideals of the profession, look forward with Mr. Justice Brewer to the time when, purer than the vestal virgin who watched the flames on the altars of imperial Rome, the lawyers standing in the grandest temple built by human hands—the temple of Justice—shall keep alive on its sacred altar the flames of equal, universal and exact justice. When that is accomplished, society will indeed be the New Jerusalem, coming out from Heaven adorned as the bride for her husband.

A Case of Trial by Jury By Henry H. Ingersoll Dean of the Department of Law, University of Tennessee. "f~LD HICKORY," first "State Solicitor," then member of the Constitutional Convention, then Con gressman, then United States Senator, all of which offices, save the second, and all other offices, state and federal, which he ever held, except the Presidency, he voluntary resigned, was in 1798 ap pointed judge of the Superior Court of Tenessee, a court of dernier ressort, and with two other judges held the court for six years, wherefore he was dubbed by Judge Seymour D. Thompson, in a model address before the Tennessee Bar Association, "Mr. Justice Jackson."

The reported decisions of that court during his period of service are to be found in Vol. 1 and 2 of Overton's Reports, alias "First and Second Ten nessee Reports"; and it is noted and noteworthy that therein is not a single opinion attributed to Andrew Jackson, although he is supposed to have deliv ered his share of those pronounced per curiam, and is known to have been peculiarly effective ore tenus. All the cases in these volumes are reported in the oral or colloquial style of English reports, in many of them counsel intervening and every judge