Court Opinion

ID: 9645233
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:17:33.629015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:25.497259
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Bell :
I concur in the result, but I am compelled to make additional comments.
I strongly disagree with Justice Cohen's conclusion that a lower Court should never be permitted to have its practices and procedures supported by a counsel of its own choosing.
The questions and issues raised in this case were exceptional. They involved not only thousands of mothers, putative fathers and helpless dependent babies and little children, but likewise the powers and the practices and procedures which the County Court of Philadelphia had established and long followed. If these practices were held to be invalid or unconstitu*487tional, the result would seriously impede the prompt disposition by the Court of the multitude of eases of this nature which are brought before it. To invalidate the long-established practices and procedures in this field would tremendously increase the backlog of cases in that Court and postpone for many months, if not for many years, the necessary financial support by fathers of babies and little children. Under these exceptional circumstances, it was certainly wise to permit the County Court to intervene and to present its views by David Berger, an attorney of its choice. Mr. Berger, a former Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, a former City Solicitor, and a prominent member of the Bar, alleged in his petition that the case “. . . affects in the highest degree the procedures of the County Court, the substantial backlog of cases, and the support of a large number of illegitimate children.
“In addition, this case presents issues of paramount importance to the general public, to the Commonwealth as a whole, and to the courts in which the Civil Procedural Support Law and support matters generally are enforced.”
Mr. Berger also alleged in his petition that the decision of the Supreme Court “. . . will have a serious effect on the current, great backlog of support cases as yet unheard. Further, your Petitioner believes that should the procedure which it [the Court] has followed in this case and in all such cases since the effective date of the amendatory Act be overturned, a new and even greater backlog of such cases will be created which will substantially delay justice to the point that in many instances, justice may be denied entirely to the unfortunate illegitimate children and their mothers for whose benefit the Legislature enacted the Support Law.”
*488Under such circumstances, it was eminently proper that the petition of the County Court to be represented by an attorney of its choice should be granted.*

 We note that in In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, the Supreme Court of the United States permitted an Attorney General to present and argue the appeal before that Court as amicus curiae, on behalf of the Ohio Association of Juvenile Court Judges.