The Newark star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1909, 1909-09-22
SWEENEY ATTACKS
LAW RELATING TO
POLICE COURTS
Favors Revision, and Says Cor
regional Institutions OF
State Are Disgrace.

Former Judge Algernon t. Sweeney
In a statement issued to the public
outlines a plan for the reorganization
of the police and district courts and
discusses several other matters of In
terest.
With regard to the statement of
President Taft as to the necessity of
r~eorganizing the civil and criminal
courts, Judge Sweeney says:
"Raise the salary and require the
judges to sit five days each week, in
stead of three.
1.-THE raise of salary is just. The
Judges are efficient and popular; the
prestige and business of the courts
have steadily grown from the time OF
John w. Griggs's splendid appoint
ments. The courts jurisdiction has
been more than doubled, and the
volume of its business quadrupled. Add
a law requiring a defendant to file an
affidavit of merits if he intends to In
erpos a defense, and one or two other
matters, purely a procedure, n the
courts would be beyond criticism.
las to the police courts, the way Is
not SO easy, and that through no fault
of the judges. The trouble Is the law
gives them a limited jurisdiction. They
are IN the same position as the OLD
district court.
"The law relating to them Is a hodge,
podge. All inherit justice of the peace
Jurisdiction, and different statutes at
different times, applying to different
courts, are scattered through the stat
ute books, no n knows where, and
the procedure is as diverse as the Ju-
risdiction."
Speaking of the correctional instltu-
tons of the State, Judge Sweeney says
that they are "a Disgrace He then
those of New Jersey to the
institutions of other States, the balance
being all In favor of the other States.
Continuing, the statement reads:
HAS the time not come to rewrite
some of these statutes, to accord with
our social mind and conscience? Why
should we not be as honest In laws as
In business? And why is the excise
law hat has given general satisfaction
In Massachusetts,, for a generation, not
applicable to New Jersey? On prin-
ciple, IL Montclair and East Orange
and South Orange and West Orange
and Essex Fells, and Roseland and Liv-
ingston and other parts of Essex do not
want any saloons, any of the time, why
should they not be permitted to say so,
the same as Cambridge and Brookline
and Newton and Somerville and other
beautiful suburbs of Boston have beer
doing, and by the same token, IL New
ark, Jersey City, Paterson. Elizabeth,
Trenton, Camden, Atlantic City and
other cities wish to sell beer six and
one-half days each week, why should
they be not permitted to decide the
question themselves at the polls?
New Jersey cannot go on forever
with her present humiliating anarchy.
She. too, must answer, is 1t safe to
allow a city to govern itself?' My po-
litical science tells me 1t Is not safe to
do anything else. If Montclair may
choose the excise views of New Eng
land, on principle, Newark should be
permitted the excise laws of Old Eng
land. Newark does not want her po-
lice commissioners appointed at Tren-
ton.
IF someone should say, But this
would be a terrible compromise I
would again let President Taft answer,
This life Is all a serious compromise
by which, little by little, and step by
step, progress toward better things is
made All the good In the world could
not be attained in n breath. We
must achieve what we can at the time
we can and must let other aims and
objects of the highest good abide a
different opportunity for their attain
ment.'