The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-23

To the Editor of The Age Herald:
 As a constant reader of your most
 excellent paper, and as a lawyer and
 citizen qS the state of Alabama, I here- | by offer in the interest of the cause
 of justice, this short brief on the sub
 ject of judicial reform in Alabama.
 As is well known. there Is a stand
 ing committee of the present Iegisla-
 ture. constituted and appointed for the
 sole purpose of devising ways and
 means by which to effect some neces-
 sary reforms as to our courts and our system of procedure therein There is
 now pending In the present legisla- ture the Busk bill, having as its ob- | lect the consolidation of the chancerv | and circuit courts of the state aswell
 as the abolition of the law and equity courts of the several counties in which
 the have been established and also the
 state court of appeals
 | l shall not, in this brief article en- ter into a discussion of what I deem
 to be the merits or demerits of the said proposed bill. Suffice it to say. that as a general proposition the bill, with some alterations, should be ell- acted. That which l would offer is my observations respecting the absolute | necessity of some drastic changes with reference to our chancery courts and the present form of procedure therein Every well informed lawyer knows
 how and why equity Jurisprudence came to be. It Is a well known fact that it was ordained and established to remedy the injustice growing out of the strict application of the rigor- ous principles of the common law and
 had as its sole object the doing of jus tice, in spite of mere forms and hair splitting technicalities. One great jur- | ist expresses 1t thus: "To remedy that
 wherein the common law was defect i've"
 One of the first things the student of equity Jurisprudence comes in con tact with are the maxims of equity, which consist of about 13 separate
 propositions some of which are as fol- 1 lows
 l He who seeks equity must do equity. | He who comes into equity must come
 with clean hands, Equity aids the diligent
 and not the slothful. Equity suffers no wrong without a remedy. Equity regards
 not the form, but seeks the intent" There
 are others, but the foregoing will be sufficient for my purposes in this article
 The said maxims quoted constitute the
 real basis of equity Jurisprudence, and are of tremendous importance in every
 ramification of commercial and social
 activities among English speaking peo- 1 ples
 Those fundamental concepts of equity jurisprudence originated in our mother
 country-England-a were brought here 1 by our forefathers. In way We of | America in our larger and freer envir-
 onment have enlarged upon the fun
 damentals of the science of justice. Judge
 Story and other great Americans have
 added in their day and time new and brighter lustre to that splendid science of justice.
 Now here in the states of the Amer iCan union there is considerable diver sity respecting the instrumentalities by which equity Is administered. In the federal courts law and equity are administered by the same judge in one and the same court. Most of the western and northwestern states have adopted a system similar to that of the federal courts. The said courts have a law and an equity docket. In fact. most of the states have adopted the federal system with some notifications. Ala bama, Mississippi and Delaware have the separate court system. Some counties and some districts in other states have the l separate system, similar to ours of Ala l bama.
 The Alabama law student, unacauainted l with the practical workings of our bung- | ling system of chancery procedure, when
 he reads and ponders those great mixims quoted in the foregoing paragraph, would naturally feel that, though justice some- | times miscarried, In courts of law. yet | the poor and the oppressed had with them 1 a portector to which they could appeal l with the assurance of that met sure of 1 justice, which the technical forms of law | sometimes make impossible. I myself a
 few years ago. consoled my young heart
 with such happy thoughts but. ah, soon | found that it was only a dream, or, In l large measure so.
 Notwithstanding, the noble objects, for the attainment of which equity was or