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nize the third — the law's delay. Witness: the twenty days to file answer, which prac titioner uses by writing in his diary for the nineteenth day ahead, 'Draw answer, Jones case,' dismissing the subject until then; the wait of months for trial, when witnesses may be gone, and certainly have forgotten; the ex cessive length of important trials; the exces sive right of appeal, both civil and criminal, etc. The railroad, the factory, the depart ment store, the physician, the newspaper, re sponding to the spirit of the age, all do their work on modern schedule time; but the ad ministration of justice, in larger cases, sticks to its mediaeval time-table. "But it is not, perhaps, so generally recog nized that individualism is, in large part, the reason why we are unprogressive in legal procedure. There is the feeling that the individ ual should have all the rope he wants, both as to time and testimony, although the result usually is a bulk of evidence which obscures the weight of evidence and buries those de cisive points upon which every case must turn in the end. We allow appeals from court to court in all cases, encouraging the litigious spirit and discouraging that submissive spirit which elections must have, or democracy will go to pieces; grant new trials, though sub stantial justice has been reached; are satisfied to allow ten guilty to escape, to save one inno cent; insist strenuously upon the resolving of every doubt— all because the individual good appeals to us more strongly than the general good. Probably a suggestion that we might safely substitute for indictment by grand jury the accusation of the coroner's jury, or accu sation by some elected official, ready to act at any moment; or that we might, with advan tage to justice, compel the accused to testify, would be generally considered an attack on American freedom. "But does the safeguarding of individual ism, in reality, require vis to block the devel opment of legal procedure? Should we still be so afraid of our judicial machine as to fear speeding it a little? We are speeding it in minor cases, both civil and criminal, where various causes have combined to put a practical time limit both to preparation and to trial, thus excluding all but the decisive points; and it is standing the strain very well. We are

speeding it, to the limit, too, in that element of criminal justice, that part of the punish ment which is as important as the final sen tence — viz : arrest. There are no ifs nor ands. about the officer's 'Come along with me'; and yet we find practically no abuse of the power." PROPERTY (Riparian Rights. Seashore) IN the Harvard Law Review for March (V. xviii, p. 341) William R. Tillinghast, under the title of "Tide-flowed Lands and Riparian Rights in the United States," calls attention to the fact that there exist in the United States two distinct theories of shore rights and titles, and explains the historical reasons for their existence. The Connecticut theory gives the riparian owner the exclusive right to wharf and fill out in front of his upland. This right is in the nature of a franchise, since they hold the technical fee below high water mark to be in the state. The New York the ory holds that the "State owns the soil below high-water mark, in such a sense that it can be granted away at pleasure to either the upland owner or to any stranger." Though it is generally stated that at common law the Crown owned the fee between high and lowwater mark, the author shows that this was a usuqiation of the Crown in the time of the Stuarts, and that, at the time of the founding of our colonies, the owners of the shore were entitled to the land between highand lowwater mark. The doctrine that title is prima facie in the Crown has received its greatest support from the works of Lord Hale, but the author contends that "an unprejudiced exam ination will show that the prima facie theory was, in fact as well as in name, a mere theory at the time Lord Hale wrote, and that the en tire shores of England were in fact held in private ownership, as well as the rights and. franchises of the ports." The reason for the distinction in New York and Massachusetts is that New York was upon acquisition from the Dutch a Crown colony, and that "the titles to all lands in the Massa chusetts Bay Colony were first public in a much more complete sense than were the lands in England when William the Conqueror and his immediate successors made their grants." In New York very early grants were made