Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/823

 Rh

764 CURRENT LEGAL ARTICLES.

IN the National Review (London) for Sep tember, the "Reminiscences of an Irish County Court Judge"—the late Judge ' O'Connor Morris—contain the following just estimate of one of the few great judges of the present day—Lord Chief Baron Palles : The most brilliant figures on the Home Circuit of my day were John Thomas Ball and Christopher Palles, men of the most eminent parts, but very unlike each other. . . . Palles had a logical and most power ful intellect, extraordinary industry, im mense learning; above all, a fearless and in dependent spirit. He brought these great qualities to the Bench he adorns. He is, perhaps, the ablest judge in the Three King doms. He ought to have had the Great Seal of Ireland years ago, but lax administration and political favors have deprived him of the position to which he had a clear right. He has been supplanted and distanced by clever time-servers in their craft, who are not worthy to unloose his shoe-latchet. In Grattan's phrase "The curse of Ireland is on him." The genius of this great master of his art has been frowned down at the Castle. THE novel, but important, subject of "The Lawyer's Lachrymal Rights" is cleverly dis cussed by Albert W. Gaines, of the Chatta nooga Bar, in the American Law Review for September-October. Mr. Gaines asks: Has a lawyer, in the course of his argu ment to the jury, the right to cry? Has he the right, arguendo, to give vent to "words that weep and tears that speak?" . . . It will tend to quiet the professional alarm, and at the same time appease the pro fessional wrath, to know that lawyers in Tennessee, at least, have a judicial deter mination of the question recognizing and dis tinctly adjudicating the inviolable lachrymal rights of the lawyer. In a well-considered case, which came be fore the court upon an assignment of errors to the effect that "counsel for the plaintiff, in his closing argument, in the midst of a very eloquent and impassioned appeal to the

jury, shed tears and unduly excited the sym pathies of the jury in favor of the plaintiff and greatly prejudiced them against the de fendant," the Supreme Court of Tennessee, in an able opinion delivered by that erudite, discriminating jurist, Judge Wilkes, upheld the lawyer's constitutional right to cry be fore a jury. . . . As counsel for appellants in the Tennessee case referred to availed themselves of the salutary rule which excuses the citing of authorities "when there are none known to counsel;" and while the court in delivering the opinion stated, that, after diligent search no authority could be found, there being no precedent, we may confidently rely upon this case as the leading case upon lachrymal rights; and, besides the guarantee of the Constitution that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all of the privileges of the citizens of the several States, we feel that the decision is correct in principle, so sound, so broad and so universal in its ap plication that counsel all over the land may confidently rely upon it, and, under its pro tection, may unrestrainedly exercise their constitutional rights and give way to the "melting mood" in the presence of the court and jury. The right of the lawyer to cry before the jury is not only fundamental, but it is a prescriptive right, having existed from time immemorial whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. The demand for redress of all grievances at Runnymede contains no allusion to any encroachment upon the lawyer's lachrymal rights; and so the Petition of Right and the Bill of Rights are significantly silent as to the lawyer's right to cry, proving conclu sively that lachrymal rights were universally recognized and were not even questioned by the most tyrannical of kings, and that, too, in the face of the fact that these rights were being constantly, openly and notoriously practised by a profession which has never yet been accused of a retiring modesty in the assertion and maintenance of its preroga tives. Lachrymal rights are strictly personal.