Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1890-12-08
ALLIANCE JUDGES AND LAW.

ers' Alliance candidate to judgeship
who has no legal education. and the re-
port in connection Herewith that the
Alliance will send him to the law school
of the Ann Arbor university to study
law for year, forms the subject of
good deal of sarcastic comment in the
eastern papers. Beyond dispute this re-
suit of the enmity to lawyers cherished
by the Farmers Alliance is rather un-
precedented so far as the forms are con-
cerned, 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 untrammel-
ed west without danger of crushing re-
tort
1t is quite possible that the Alliance
people could reply rather forcibly that
the election of capable and impartial
ed in the law is quite as likely to pro-
duce as good an article of justice as the
system in New York. which selects judges
not by their legal attachments. but by
their willingness to yield assessments of
from $4,000 to $4,000 for the politicians
of Tammany to sustain themselves with
al. Apart from the comparison of sys-
TENS there are reasons to doubt whether
the east can claim superiority to having
judges without legal knowledge. The
case of occupants of the bench who were
compared to necessity because they knew
no law are somewhat numerous. In
Pennsylvania cities the courts of the first
instance whose jurisdiction includes
population probably equal to that with
in the district of the Kansas Judge are
placed under the guidance of aldermen,
whose legal knowledge is sometimes an
equally minus quantity. 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 Fred
erick the Great. in which that monarch
got into fearful quarrel with his judges
because they would not decide suit be-
tween 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 We're
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 case was equally cor
rect. In the present day we only need
refer to the list of meritorious 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
covery that they have elected judge
who has to be sent to law school. The