Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/123

 judges ever contribute anything of value to legal theory. One seldom hears of them protesting, either ex cathedra or as citizens, against the extravagances and absurdities that fast reduce the whole legal system of the country to imbecility; they seem to be quite content to enforce any sort of law that is provided for their use by ignorant and corrupt legislators, regardless of its conflict with fundamental human rights. The Constitution apparently has no more meaning to them than it has to a Prohibition agent. They have acquiesced almost unanimously in the destruction of the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments, and supinely connived at the invasion of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth. The reason is not far to seek. The average American judge, in his days at the bar, was not a leader but a trailer. The judicial office is not attractive, as a rule, to the better sort of lawyers. We have such a multiplicity of courts that it has become common, and judges are so often chosen for purely political reasons, even for the Supreme Court of the United States, that the lawyer of professional dignity and self-respect hesitates to enter into the competition. Thus the bench tends to be