Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/402

 39e TEDEBAL BEPOBTEB. �Eev. St. § 954, is a re-enactment of the thirty-second section of the judiciary act of 1789, (e. 20, 1 St. 91.) It empowers generally any court of the United States to disregard mere defects of form in giving judgment except those which, in cases of demurrer, the party demurring specially sets down with his demurrer as the cause thereof, and authorizes the court to amend every such defect or want of form other than those which the party demurring so expresses, and any time to per- mit parties to amend any defect in process or pleadings upon such conditions as it shall in its discretion and by its rules prescribe. �■The inserting of this section in the Eevised Statutes is an indication of the understanding of eongress that it bas not been repealed by subsequent legislation, (Eev. St. §§ 5595, 5596 ;) nor is there any difficulty in giving effect to thïs sec- tion, as well as to section 914. When section 914 was first enacted, in 1872, it immediately changed the forms and modes of pleading, including demurrers in the federal courts within states whose lociil statutes had adopted a System of pleading unlike that to which section 32 of the act of 1789 evidently refers. And there can be no doubt that in New York the declaration, plea and special demurrer referred to in the thirty-second section of the judiciary act wer& superseded by the complaint, answer and demurrer under the New York Code. The inserting of this section in the Eevised Statutes as section 954, was not designed to repeal the act of 1872, or modify it ; and in construing the two sections together the time of their original enactments, respectively, will be con- sidered, and have its due weight. �Now, the Eevised Statutes having application to ail parts of the United States, there was an obvious propriety in re- taining the thirty-second section of the act of 1789, because there might be states in which the act of 1872 had effected no change in the system of pleading inconsistent with the System of special demurrers therein referred to, and as a statute of amendments it might well be retained as having common application throughout the United States, without impairÏDg any other System of amending pleadings intro- ��� �