The San Francisco call., 1898-03-05
THE JURY SYSTEM.

/ \ necessity in knowing very little law, uses up two columns of its space to make hyster- ica protest against petit jury exemptions The bur den of its complaint that section 200 ot the Code of Civil Procedure perpetrates outrage when 1t says that attorneys preachers almshouse keepers prison officials, sailors, express agents mail carriers, tele- graph officials, national guardsmen fremen and railway employees shall not be compelled to sit on jures Our contcmporary's thinker" incines to the belief that if these classes all forced to do jury duty justice would be administered more uniformly and-we infer-an occasional verdict might be rem dered against the railroad monopoly.
 The difficulty with this ponderous legal uminary is that does not understand the of the exemp tons concerning which 1t complains With respect to the national guardsmen and hremen the purpose of the law Is to induce to do militia and fire duty The idea is that citizen soldiers and frenien should get something more substantial than newspaper no- torety for protecting life and property. (Lest our contemporary may say that hremen paid we will mention that country fire departments mostly volunteer) Railway and telegraph men ex- empted because it is thought that they will accom- modate the public more by attending to their bus- than by serving juries There would be quite much sense in making Judges and Sherfs serve in making attorneys who officers of the court and part of the judicial machinery. And so with
 
 Another trouble with our grandiloquent contempor- ary is that relics ancient history for its know- edge of the jury system. What Junus and Paley said about jurieS is at present irrelevant and mmateraL They lived when the system was actually "bulwark of liberty Bulwarks Of liberty longer neces- sary. The great problem of modern times Is not to discover methods of preserving liberty, of which there Is abundance hand at all times, but to find ways for preventing corporations using liberty to fleece the masses. The jury system is valuable aid in deprivng the people of some of the blessings of liberty. When street corporation for instance person. plenty of juries always found to bring n a verdict for the defendant How would this be changed by summoning lawyers, ministers, Sheriffs and railway employees to sit uries?
 As matter of fact the system of submitting legal disputes to twelve "peers" is rapidly going out of date. Intelligent men all over the world are recog- nizing it, under modern conditions, as a failure If jrlries ignorant they preudiced; if they prcjudced they fall victims to the blandish- ments of tricky lawyers; if they not moved by eloquent sophistry they are fixed" So in any event they fail to do justice Their verdicts are con- santly being aside by the appellate courts as tary the evidence or as the result of passion and prejudice.
 The reformed procedure" introduced by the late David Dudley Field contemplates their final aban- donment. Every year puts them further behind us Probably they would long ago have been abolished had not the aw-ever conservative-feared the awful shock of such profound thinking as is thought by esteemed contemporary. The legislation against the jury system in this State, which thinkers" like contemporary regard with so much apprehen- sion, is merely manifestation of the tendency of the age. The jury system in time win disappear. The youth who writes two columns day in our con- temporary to express single thought may himself live to see 1t abolished