New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1910-03-09

he Review. Editor.1
| we have all kinds of liberty. Let US
just for a moment stop to consider
what power is vested in our judiciary.
It is within its province to declare
upon the constitutionality or uncon-,
stitutionality of any law that our re-
representatives. may enact and which
the citizens may desire. Why should
we have body of men, in many ms
tances appointed for life and practi-
caIly not responsible to any body, tell
US, the people of this country, that
what we want is not good for US or
that we do not know and have no right
TO determine what is good for us?
Would it not be better for us to pass
such legislation as we feel is for the
best interests of the entire country,
and find out from actual experience
whether or not it works our and if not
to repeal it? To show how great this
constitutionality business really is, /
need to refer only to the income tax
which had become law and law
which vast majority of the citizens
demanded and which would have
yielded us enormous revenues and
from people who could we'll afford to
pay this tax. And why should not the
rich pay the bulk of the taxes and
why should it not have remained on
or statue books as valid law, and
have produced good results? I know
of no reason, except that our Supreme
Court by vote of to said it was
no good. And they even tell us that
the day before the decision was filed
five were in favor of its validity and
that during the night one of them
changed his mind. What reasons
prompted this change of mind makes
but little difference as far as [ can
see, except that it proves conclusively
that it is very poor business to entrust
such colossal powers to so limited a
number of people. Besides acting as
impires in the matter of legislation,
the judges have been clothed with the
authority and they assume the right
to fine or imprison any one who dares
to refuse to obey their edicts and the
delinquent has no right to trial by
jury. Who, in all Christendom, has
more power than these judges exercise
in sending citizens of the republic to
prison without trial, and refusal
or inability to pay a fine means ina.
prisonment? Possibly the Gear of
Russia whom we all so cheerfully
detest may Go such things, but no
monarch ofthe other European coun-
tries does such things, or would be
permitted by his subjects to do such
things.
Because of the powers we have en-
trusted to the judiciary we have grown
into the belief that the law is the pam
acea of all human ills, and if anything
comes up that does not seem quite
right, a law is Immediately passed to
remedy the evil. We do not make
any attempts to get to the root of the
evil and eliminate the causes that
produce the evil by creating proper
and natural conditions. We fall into
the same error in the matter of medi-
cine and swallow all kinds of dope to
secure temporary relief, when we
might rem ain we'll and eliminate dis
ease and unease if we simply lived
according to the rules of nature.
Nature is bound to keep US we'll if we
only give her half chance. So it
would be in the case of social ills.
Another point: In framing our laws
we have left the realm of simple Ian
guage and use words and phrases
that are unintelligible to the layman
and we must perforce call in the SER
vices Of a Philadelphia lawyer to in
terpret what the law making body
really intends to say. It was not very
long ago that one of the Assistants in
the Attorney Generals Office felt
called upon to interpret certain sec
tions of our liquor law and he relieved
himself thusly: TIA guest in a hotel
which has a bar, desiring to drink a
bottle of beer in his room calls the
bell boy, gives him the money and the
bell boy goes to the place where
liquors are dispensed, and purchases
and pays for the beer, then the sale is
perfectly legal. But, if perchance, the
guest doesn't pay for the beer until
it is delivered in his room, then the
sale is an illegal one and someone is
amenable to prosecution under the
law Have you ever heard of
more utter nonsense?
I have simply picked out this as
sample Of law and it's construction
because the liquor question is upper