A Layman's Views on Law Reform to executives for pardons are almost always one-sided, and they frequently afford opportunity for medical practi tioners to give expert testimony of dubious quality. Against this abuse indi vidual lawyers cannot effectively pro test; so that bar associations must be relied on to expound, and to prevent by new legislation the abuse of the pardon ing power. The public has lately seen with much anxiety the involvement of courts with two very contentious subjects — indus trial disputes and politics. Industrial disputes inevitably come before courts in connection with the use of the injunc tion and the definition of conspiracy; and here the better public opinion holds that the courts can properly act in in dustrial disputes as a conservative force on the side of order and fair play. The public unquestionably looks for the aid of both bench and bar in keeping all legal procedures fair and humane in cases involving controversy between capital and labor. Lawyers and courts can do much to mitigate the bitterness of the industrial warfare, while main taining all just liberties and the rights of property. A recent Massachusetts statute gives to the defendant in pro ceedings for violation of an injunction the right to trial by jury on the issue of fact only, if the violation is an act which would also be a crime. This act removes the main cause of complaint by labor leaders against the use of injunc tions; but it also cripples the injunction as a prompt defense against threatened violence. Professional opinion is divided as to the merits of the act, the weight of opinion being apparently adverse. The act is, at least, an intelligent and important experiment. The cases in which politicians have been suspected of packing courts and judges have been known to take active part in political
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management are fortunately few; politi cal campaigns in which the conduct of the judiciary, and the means of reversing judicial decisions have been made pri mary issues have been fewer still; but the uneasiness of the public about the connection between politics on the one hand, and legal procedure and judicial decisions on the other, has been con siderable. In view of this uneasiness one cannot doubt that the abandonment of the policy of electing judges for short terms would contribute greatly to the re-establishment of the bench in the loyal regard of the American people. LEGAL EDUCATION When one who has had the privilege of devoting the greater part of his life to educational administration is forced to consider the problem dealt with in this paper, he inevitably asks himself whether legal education could be so im proved that both bench and bar would gradually come to occupy in the minds of the American people a higher posi tion than they now hold. For my own part, I incline to the belief that if ex aminations for admission to the bar always covered some cultural subjects, like history, economics, government and ethics, as well as legal subjects, some improvement in the standing of the legal profession would gradually re sult. Such a policy would take effect not by improving the higher levels of the profession, but by excluding the lower. Every evil or problem mentioned in this paper has often been described and discussed by members of the legal pro fession, bar associations and teachers of law, and all the remedies I have men tioned may be found in comparatively recent legal literature. You and I are fully aware of this fact. This paper might easily have been made up exclu sively of quotations from published
