The Portland daily press., 1876-01-25
A Much Needed Reform,

A Much Needed Reform.
Few branches of human knowledge are so
ill understood as the administration of law.
People have long looked upon Law as a god
with protecting spear and shield, and they
have refrained from all endeavor to seek out
the ways of the immortal one. Now they
begin to look upon it as fetch, unworthy
of any regard. Yet law, as a science, is based
on selfevident principles, not above the COM
prehension of any person of average sense.
These principles are involved in the consti-
tuition of society, and are simply the proper
rules of conduct between man and man.
Law is but the enforced application of the
rule, Do as ye would be done by. Jurispru-
dence is merely the formal expression of nat
ural justice. 1t is in its nature unchanged
ago, will be true thousand years hence.
They are easily understood of all men. But
the application of them to the multiple rela-
tions of man with man in our complex civili-
zation is accompanied with great difficulty.
While the principles themselves are simple
and Interchangeable, the application of them,
the enactment and administration of stat
utes, the courses of procedure, are to great
degree varying and experimental. Justice
is simple and easily understood. The meth
cd of its administration is fraught with great
difficulty and is the occasion of grave and
honest differences ofopinlon. 1t is only reas-
enable and just that this matter of admins
tration should be shaped by men who have
made of life study, by lawyers themselves,
for the layman must from the necessity of the
case remain ignorant as to the comparative
merit of methods, and trust the matter of
codes and administration to those who have
made these their business, as he trusts the
designing of his buildings to an architect, or
the fashioning of his machines to an engi-
neer. All he can ask is that statutes and
forms and methods shall be framed to facili-
tate and expedite justice and not to impede
it. While he cannot centrive methods I'M
self, nor judge priori of their workings, his
common-sense, which he possesses in as high
degree as does the jurist. enables him to tell
whether these methods accomplish or not the
CAuo oCoihCu3 do AC hnOno WuCbnOL LIS
is comfortable or inconvenient, whether his
machines work or are failures. He is COM
petent judge of results if not of methods.
Now to the majority of people it seems
that our methods fail to bring about the
wished-for results. They see great delay in
the administration of justice; they not
unfrequently see injustice perpetrated under
the forms of law; and they see the right fire.
quently baked and the wrong" assisted by
the existence of technicalities which ap,
pear to them useless and absurd. The con-
viction is deep and widespread that the pres
ent system of forms is much better suited to
test the ability and learning of lawyers
than to subserve the interests of their clients.
As proof of the suspicion they point 10 the
crowded dockets of our courts, to the fire.
quent delays and not infrequent miscarriage
ofjustice, and ask themselves how it is that
man with no real defense can arrest judg-
ment for months and even years, and if his
purse be deep and that of his opponent slen-
der, sometimes escape altogether from the
consequence of his wrong-doing. They are
interests are ipjuriously affected thereby. and
that radical revision is imperatively called
for. Nor are these grumblings the mere out
come of ignorance. The most learned law
yers themselves acknowledge the evils and
would welcome remedy.
Now no one will pretend that the fault les
in the law itself, the principles of which are
simple and Interchangeable, for law is only JUS
tice. The fault must be in the administration,
in the application of the principles, in that per-
picking and cumbersome code of procedure
which has grown up through the centuries.
These rules of application are deserving of
attention and respect as the result of years of
experience; but they do not call for unhesi-
tating and unquestioning approval. When
| they fail, through the growth of our complex
civilization, through the ever varing relations
between men, or through any other cause,
to meet their object,-the speedy and impair
| tial administration of justice-they should be
| discarded. While it is evident that rules are
needed prescribing the manner in which cases
| must be brought before tribunals, in which
differences must be presented so as 10 make
| the issue clear, and in which testimony must
be adduced so as to bring out the whole
| truth, it is not at all clear that the present
methods are the best. In certain respects
| the layman is better judge of their success
| than is the lawyer; for the lawyer has been
educated in the code of procedure, has come
to look upon it as the product of the ripest
wisdom, has even, in many instances, con-
| fused science and application, forgotten that
the rules of application are wholly empirical,
and confounded eternal principles with tenn
porary methods OF applying them. He is fire.
| quently slave to the tyranny of procedure,
a system of procedure, too, which had its
birth centuries ago, which is the legitimate
offspring of the AriStotlean dialectics and the
subtleties of the schoolmen, systems of rea-
soning the most hair-splitting ever known
and which gave unlue attention to words at
the expense of facts. In his admiration for
his art. in his eager desire to trip an oppo.
nent, in his endeavor to show his mastery of
legal logic, he too often overlooks the SUBJ
stantial claims of justice. This hair-splitting
system of logic is fun for the lawyers, but
death to their clients. The dialectics of the
schoolmen have now but two strong-holds,
theology and law, and the public interest re-
quires that they should be driven out from
the latter Of these.
What special reforms are needed it is not
the place here to state. The task OF reform