The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1881-03-18
The Modern Professions.

The Modern Professions.
Every one remembers the village
pedagogue, who so excited the wonder
of the common folk, that one small
head could contain all he knew. But
that pedagogue lives to-day, and is the
type of most of our professional life.
The man who in medicine or surgery
advertises himself as specialist" is q
quack, and the lawyer who gives out
that he will devote his time to one
branch of law is ''shyster," and it Is
only few years since the printing of
newspapers and horse bills were divOrc-
ed.
We would not have dared to print
what we do to-day ten years ago, and
hardly would be permitted to do so
now, was it not in the words of a judge
on the bench. Judge Laughlin, of
Saint Louis, in the Globe Democrat,
gives his views of the methods for re-
lieving the supreme court of Missouri,
now four years behind with its docket.
And we quote this paragraph:
"The law, in its entire scope, is too vast for
any one man. Within a quarter of a century it
has grown with wonderful rapidity. No man
can grasp 1t all Like medicine, it requires its
specialists. II this be true, how absurd it is to
expect one man to comprehend it all! And yet
this is, under our present system. precisely
what is demanded Of the Judges Of aul~Supreme
Court. We take a man from the bar-generally
untried and of limited practiceSand require
him at once to traverse the whole length and
breadth of Jurisprudence, to decide cOntrOvers-
les of every conceivable character, to do it in
hurry, and yet expect him to be thorough. The
feat is impossible; to demand it, ridiculous.
He strives to accomplish it, but, of course,
fails. The people reap the fruits"
This is common sense. AS in the
case of medicine, the result of the
ostracism of specialists, has been to put
into the pockets of patent medicine
vendors the profits that ought to be the
reward of skill and professional ability.
So in the law, in barring out the ''shys-
ters," the whole has been leavened
with the evil, until it has got upon the
bench. Under this system the law of
to-day is essentially court-made law,
there is little or nothing certain any
more. Your case in court is no longer
dependent. on its merits, or the princi-
pies underlying it, but mainly on the
industry of the attorney in hunting up
decisions and presidents. The case
may 60 against you on the cases cited
and read to the court, while perhaps
the book lying under the one used
would have, if opened, given the case
in your favor.
Many years ago, those who were in
the habit of loafing about court houses,
will remember that when a case was
closed by the lawyers, the court would
address the jury, telling them what
the law was, how it's principles applied
to the case in hand, and everybody
listened to learned lecture on the law
of the case from one who had made it
a study. Who hears such thing now?
When the case is closed the judge says:
"Will you give me brief Of your
authorities? and have you your bill of
exceptions ready?" Then he tells the
jury that the plaintiff relies ON so-and-
so, and the defendant relies on so-and-
so; and if you think so-and-so, then
your verdict will be so-and-so; but if
you don't think so-and-So, then you
will not decide sO-and-so; but other
wise, so-and-so. And in the progress
of the trial when the lawyer makes a
point, the court asks: "Where is your
authority for that?"
This is not an eXaggeration, at least
in the opinion OF Judge Laughlin, for
he says:
''Now, maintain that to obtain q consistent
and stable system Of laws, learning in the
judges is Indispensable, and maintain further,
that they never will he truly learned until they
are male specialists. The tendency of all law
yers, who are constantly crowded. and pushed,
is to case law, not principles. The same thing
is true of them when converted from lawyers to
Judges. And right hire, in my Judgment, lies
the secret of such endless conflict of decision.
In their haste they fail to discriminate between
dictum aud decision, and thus Inadvertently
make that law which is not, and never ought to
be. Having done this, they afterwards discover
their error, and, in an attempt to correct it,
and the result is-litigatiOn."
This is as true as the eternal princi-
Piles Of law, and it is a terrible truth,
when we reflect that it is the way law
is made in these modern days. There
is more dictum law to-day than even
decision law, bad as it is. Like the
doctors who never allow a remedy to be |
used in practice until it is printed in
the dispensatOry, SO the legal profession
have sought to hedge out uncertainty |
by having one court follow another, or |
by the dictum of the higher court gov
erning the decision of the lower, but |
even that is giving way, and lower
courts not only disregard higher courts,
but tribunal often reverses itself.
And it must necessarily be 50, for some
times great principle, or great in
terest comes before court that cannot
be sacrificed to even judicial consist
ency.
One of the most remarkable exam
pies of this narrow conception of law
and procedure, was in the impeachment
of Andrew Johnson. Here is placed in
the constitution high political rene
dy; one that is not recognized by the
common law, but placed in the hands
Of the legislative authority for the pro-
lection of the government against the
usurpation of the executive. 1t is
eXtra.judicial and essentially political,
yet the case was tried as technically as
a case of horse-stealing, or in a nisi
prius case before an ordinary jury.
And that has gone into history as a
precedent for all future time.
Judge Laughlin has hit upon the
true reason for not only the crowding
of business before our own court, but
an abuse that exists everywhere. How
far those modern invention called
codes have to answer for the demorali.
"a tiOp IF nrocfioo ia anOthpr fhinr an6