Twin city review. [volume] (Champaign, Ill.) 19??-1929, 1923-05-04
THE REACTIONARY
JUDGE MUST GO,
SAYS JUDGE FORD
By JOHN K. FORD.
Justice, New York State Supreme
Court.

Court.
We must find a way 20 get rid o.
the reactionary dudge-the servans
Of plutoeraey. ] can think Of no
more effective remedy than that adj
yocated By Theodore Roosevelt
recall OF judges under such safeguards
az vii prevent too hasty or inc0nsid-
crate action.
Rooseyelps cwn language in his
Lincoln Day speech Of 1913 was:
MY own preference would be to
have judges elected or appointed for
an indefinite term or during good
behavior, but subject ito recall By
popular vote every two years, which
system, IN its essentials would be like
that which has actually. although not
nominally, obtained in Vermont, ex-
eept that it would substitute popular
vote for legislative action
IN the same speech speaking Of the
power exercised by the courts to de-
clare acts of Congress uneonstitution-
al Roosevelt declared:
Marshall performed a great and
needed service, one Of the greatest
services any statesman ever perform
ed, when in a period of national weak
ness he put the Supreme Court be
hind the national ideal. But such a
practice as he inaugurated could be
maintained permanently only if ii
was exercised with the greatest mod
Grafton. For over half a century il
was thus exercised. But under the
strain of what | must call class pres
sure, the pressure of the privileged
- IA ka
past fifty years come 10 be exercised
in utterly reckless fashion. The re-
suit has been in a larientably large
number of cases TO make the courts
the bulwarks of special privilege
against justice"
The class pressure in earlier times
to which the courts bowed was that
of the slave holding interests. To
their influence the infamous bred
Scott decision was attributed. Indeed
Lincoln charged that the decision was
part of a conspiracy between the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
two PRESIDENTS of the United States
and a certain United States Senator.
At that time the Supreme Court was
the same learned, dignifed and august
body which we have today and its de-
crees were then as now commonly re-
eelved almost as reverentially as the
children of Israel received the Ten
Commandments from the Lord on
Mount Sinai.
The bred Scott decision was rem
dered in 1857 and Lincoln declared:
Somebody has to reverse that de-
cision since it was made, and we mean
to reverse it, and we mean to do it
peaceably."
That statement was taken up and
made much of by his adversaries and
he was accused of undermining the
authority of the courts and melting to
lawlessness by his criticisms. Said his
chief critic:
"He tells you that he does not like
the Dded Scott decision. Suppose he
does not, how is he going to help
himself? He says that he will re-
verse it. How will he reverse it?
= The bred Scott decision was
pronounced by the highest tribunal on
earth. From that decision there is no
appeal this side of heaven"
Well, the bred Scott decision was
reversed not peaceably as Lincoln
fondly hoped, but through the utter
destruction of the unrighteous system
which it was designed to buttress and
perpetuate.
Not through an appeal to Heaven
but by the might of an aroused peo-
pie through four years of civil war
crowned by Lincoln's own martyrdom
was the infamous judgment nullified.
Let those who stubhofnly persist in
their blind opposition to peaceable
means of cufbing the power of the
courts to subordinate human rights
to property rights-to nut the dollar
above the man-and establish the
ruthless rule of the money kings over
the people, take warning. For a
Lincoln declared, 1.-THE people of these
United States are the rightful masters
both of Congress and the Courts, not
to verthrow the constitution, but to
overthrow the men who pervert the
Constitution"