Page:Bench and bar of Colorado - 1917.djvu/22

18 simple, but they filled the wants of the people then digging for gold in the mountains.

The officers of a Miners' Court were a president, a probate judge, a sheriff or constable, a surveyor and recorder, a secretary and a treasurer. The probate judge was the chief executive officer. All officers were elected at a general meeting of the male residents of the district over which the court was to have jurisdiction. Codes, criminal as well as civil, were enacted. These codes were, as a rule, very simple. Anyone could understand them. The criminal laws, usually, were enacted with the one purpose in view of ridding the community of undesirables, either by the hangman or by banishment. The civil code dealt chiefly with those subjects in which the men who devised it were mostly interested such as mining claims, mill sites, and other matters relating to mining.

The Miners' Courts worked with promptness and dispatch. Litigants and defendants had little cause to complain about the law's delays. Once a Miners' Court had taken jurisdiction over a case it was not long before the case had been disposed of. To prevent miscarriage of justice and give everyone a square deal provision for appeal was made in every one of the districts. Every litigant and defendant had the right to appeal from the decision of the court to a miners meeting, composed of all the men in the district. The decision of the miners' meeting in all cases was final.

The Miners' Courts, perhaps more than any other agency, were responsible for the maintenance of law and order in the mining communities. They enjoyed the universal respect of the law-abiding citizens and were feared by evildoers. The first assembly of the Territory of Colorado, in 1861, by special enactment, confirmed their judgments and also enacted into state-wide laws many of the provisions of their simple codes as they affected the mining industry.

Failure of the Kansas, Jeffersonian and municipal courts in Arapahoe county to punish evildoers, according to their deserts, resulted in the organization, by the better class of