Page:North Dakota Law Review Vol. 1 No. 8 (1924).pdf/3

Rh in all legislative bodies, the lawyer is mainly responsible for whatever evil has grown into the system. But this growth is better understood than is the lawyer-congressman's unwillingness or his inactivity in extricating legal procedure from cumbersome, involved and ineffective rules. Fifty years ago the English courts were given the precise authority that is now asked for the Federal courts, and the superiority of procedure in England over that in this country is now proverbial.—Kansas City Star.

Attorney Paul W. Boehm, of Hettinger, replied to this article, and we reprint here a part of that reply, to-wit:

This is only another manifestation of the popular sport of blaming the lawyers for all the defects in our laws, and at the same time it demonstrates how far astray a layman will go when he wanders in unfamiliar fields.

Is it true that the lawyers make the laws? Our legislatures are composed of laymen by a very large majority. The sprinkling of lawyers only partially succeeds in stemming the flood of ambiguous, contradicting and often incomprehensible laws that are ground out in such lavish profusion each year. Many of these laws are so clearly the work of untrained minds (or should I say hands?) that even the editor of the Kansas City Star will hesitate to attribute them to the lawyer members of the legislatures. Their authors are evidently unfamiliar with the laws on the books and so only create more confusion when they seek to make changes. The result is as disastrous as when a lawyer attempts to operate a farm or go into any business or profession for which he is unprepared by previous study and experience.

Without laws and without practitioners thoroughly familiar with laws, we should have to revert to the settlement of disputes by “Trial by battle,” or to the practice prevailing when fanatical mysticism ordained that a man charged with a crime be tried by dipping his bare arms in boiling lard and the innocent man could only escape conviction by a miracle.

Only when all laws are passed on by experts in the law, before enactment, can the profession be blamed for the overwhelming number, the conflicting and often incomprehensible nature, and the instances of miscarriage in our laws. When the American Bar Association raps on the doors of our national legislature for nine years for the passage of laws to simplify the Federal procedure, it is neither logic nor just to blame the lawyers for the haphazard rules of procedure obtaining in the Federal courts.

McIntosh, Receiver, vs. Dakota Trust Company et al

A bank applied for fidelity bonds for its several officers and in the separate applications certified that the officer for whom application was made performed his duties in a satisfactory manner; that his accounts were correct; that he was not in arrears; that he was entitled to confidence and was qualified to discharge his duties;