The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-03-29
Law and Human Progress
Continued from Fourteenth Page)

of action was proper, but would simply
leave him to guess again. 1t was only
by costly process of elimination that
a plaintiff could certainly determine what
was his proper legal remedy. The other
technicalities and legal fictions were
numerous and rigidly adhered to.
Down to 1902, / think, the three SUI
perior Courts of Common Law and the
Court of Equity were all held in the
great hall of William Rufus, within a
few feet of each other, on the same pave
ment, without partitions. | have visited
the historic room, and wondered at the
mental attitude of great lawyers who
held tenaciously to the idea that the
distinction between law and equity was
something foreordained in the very ma
ture of things, indispensable, and in some
indefinable way connected with the
maintenance of our liberties. Yet that
sytem would permit man to obtain a
Judgment, as a sacred right, in one spot
in that great hail. when few feet away
another court was sitting, within hear
ing. and without any wall to bostruct
the view that would hold him an I'M
considerable rogue if he should offer to
by the heels if he attempted to do so.
And even on the law side of the docket
a royal commission reported, so late as
1881, there is at present no authentic
enumeration of all the forms of action
So doubtful were even the most expert
enced lawyers as to the limits of the dlf-
ferent forms of actions that 1T is SAID
| that old Judge Cowen, of the New YORK
| Supreme Court died in the belief that
/ We had mot yet sounded the depths oil
! trespass on the case; and the great
Judge Story was possessed of the belief
that equity could reform a policy OF
/ insurance.
1t is little more than fifty years since
the movement began that in England and
in most of her colonies, and in the great
er part of the United States, has swept
away the distinction $50 far as procedure
/ goes) between law and equity, and be-
tween the forms of action. and has sub
stituted one form of action in which the
plaintiff shall plainly and intelligently
without undue repetition. state his
ground of action and the defendant shall
reply in the same way. so that the case
shall be tried ON its merits and in
business-like way 1t was unavoidable
that the new system should be intrusted
for its workings at first to judges and
/ lawyers who had grown up under the old
system of technicalities under which form
was more important than the substance
/ of legal proceedings. 1t was another in
stance of putting new wine in old bot
/ ties" But the reform has made it's way.
| and now by the evolution of time the adj
| ministration of the Code system, where
ever it has been adopted, is in the hands
of its friends. In some States it has not
yet been adopted, and in others only in
/ modified form
/ Each State that has adopted the Re-
| formed Procedure naturally thinks it
has the best In fact. however. England.
! ultra consecutive as it is, has the
/ simplest and most advanced system.
| There Parliament simply abolished the
old courts and distinctions in forms of
actions and between law and equity, and
authorized the single new court that was
established to prepare rules to regulate
/ procedure. This has been done in a most
admirable manner. 1t is doubtful il a
simpler and more logical procedure could
he framed than that which now obtains
in the mother country.
LABOR LEGISLATION.
The Statute of Laborers, 233 Ed. III
passed by a Parliament of land owners
soon after the scourge called the Black
/ Death had reduced the number of la
borers. provided: Every man and wo-
man in England, free or bond, able in