Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-11-19
ALLIANCE JUDGES AND LAW.

The election, out in Kansas, of q Farmers
Alliance candidate to a judgeship, who has
no legal education, and the report in con-
nection Herewith that the Alliance will
send him to the law school of the Ann
Arbor University to study law for a year,
forms the subject OF good deal of sarcastic
comment in the Eastern papers. Beyond
dispute this result of the enmity to lawyers
cherished by the Farmers Alliance is
concerned; but it is not by any means clear
that the cultured East is always so free from
the election of Judges with little knowledge
of law as to be able to point the finger OF
sarcasm at the untrammeled West, without
danger of crushing retort.
1t is quite possible that the Alliance peo-
pie could reply rather forcibly that the elec-
tion of capable and impartial citizen as
Judge, even though uninstructed in the
law, is quite as likely to produce as good
an article of justice as the system in New
York which selects judges not by their legal
attainments, but by their willingness to
yield assessments of from 81, 900 TO S15, 600,
themselves withal. Apart from the COM
parison of systems, there are reasons to
doubt whether the East can claim superiority
to having judges without legal knowledge.
The case of occupants o. the bench who were
compared to necessity because they knew no
law. are somewhat numerous. In Pennsyl-
vania cities the courts of the first instance
whose jurisdiction includes a population
probably equal to that within the district of
the Kansas judge, are placed under the
guidance OF aldermen whose legal know
ledge is sometimes an equally minus guam
tity. In this case Kansas seems to be ahead,
for there the course is taken of putting the
judge-elect through years legal training;
while Pennsylvania aldermen are often left
to acquire what legal knowledge they ever
attain, at the cost of the litigants before
their courts.
The English system, from which our legal
ideas are mainly drawn, constitutes many of
its colonial governors as judges, with the
power of revision. 1t is related that one of
the chancellors whose duty it is to review
these decisions told Governor without legal
training who asked his advice on the
discharge of this duty, to "Decide
your cases on their merits, but beware
OF giving your reasons" and the chancellor
claimed that the advice was justified by the
fact that every decision returned by that
Governor without an extended opinion was
sustained, while of those which tried TO
argue the case the majority were overruled.
Another illustration comes from famous
case in the time of Frederick the Great in
which that monarch got into fearful quar-
rel with his judges because they would not
decide suit between mill-owner and some
landed proprietors as he thought it ought to
be decided. According to all the precedents
of law the judges were right and were TO be
commended for sticking to their decision in
the teeth of the royal wrath; but according
to natural justice the old kings view of the
day we only need to refer to the list of meri-
torious cases thrown out of court, by some
purely technical plea, to justify the inquiry
whether justice is only to be obtained by
those trained in the technicalities of the
law.
AT all events the Farmers Alliance
people need not be stampeded by the dis
coyery that thoy have elected Judge who
has to be sent to law school. The centers
of commerce and finance can furnish plenty
of subjects for whom the same training
would be eminently salutary.