The call of the North. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1923-1924, 1924-02-01
PRO-ALIENs SHOW CONCERN over TREND OF
NEWS WRITER'S

ed in New Jersey, translated as fol-
lows: We pride ourselves on having
Polish judge here, and Polish clerk
there followed by an appeal for the
Polish voters to stand together if
they want more Offices. Contrast the
warning spoken before the highest
national assembly of American
lawyers with the situation in some of
our largest cities and states where
many of the magistrates in our low
err courts and not few of the judges
in our higher tribunals are either
foreign born or Of foreign extraction.
Contrast it with the fact that in the
richest and busiest metropolis of the
United States of some eleven thous-
and lawyers, more than SO per cent
are of foreign birth or of foreign par
entage.
"No less a careful and judicial body
than the Committee on Legal Edu-
cation of the Association of the Bar
of the city of New York, under the
craftsmanship of the dean of the Co.
lumbia Law School, has gone on re-
cord with this finding which / have
emphasized in part: Many of these
men come to the bar with little know
ledge of American institutions and
with little or no appreciation Of those
ideals and traditions which have in
the past dominated the spirit of our
Anglo-American legal system
Il. The result is that the bar is car
rying an almost insupportable bur-
den of a large membership untitled
by education or experience to bear it's
responsibilities and without the ineli-
nation which comes naturally from
familiarity with our institutions, to
maintain its traditions. ="
Jury Box Important
"But what shall we say of that
other burden Of alienage upon our
legal systematic burden of mental
and moral alienage upon the system
of trial by jury? Let US bear in mind
that the ultimate enforcement of the
law rests upon the jury box; that
under the constitution of every state
in the Union, no member of the state
can be deprived of any of the rights
or privileges secured to citizens 'un-
less by the law of the land, or the
judgment of his peers 1t is seri-
Gus problem enough when the law
of the land is becoming subject
more and more to interpretations by
lawyers and judges culturally alien
to our juridic life and traditions; but
subtler danger is developing
through the cultural alienage of vast
masses of foreign born or foreign
minded peers who today sit in
judgment in the jury boxes of Amer
lean courts. 1t takes only sixty
months residence in this country
land that residence may be in the
non-American environment of a for
eign "colony" in our midst)' and the
most simple of tests in the veneer of
Americanization to make an Ana
tolian shepherd or a Russian mujik
entitled to sit in judgment as a peer
in an American court. It is enough
to state it to show not merely the
absurdity but the grave danger of
such a free and easy system. And
those well-intentioned, but thought
less, Americans who are so anxious
to 'naturalize' the newcomers as
quickly and in as great numbers as
possible, ought to bear in mind that
such crude and surface citizenship
has it's repercussions not only on our
political institutions but on that
great legal system which, through
the centuries, the Anglo-Saxons have
carefully built up as bulwarks Of
self-government Of and by the peo-
pie"