Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/347

 THE GREEN BAG invalidity of a patent often cannot be finally decided for several years, with description of the bill, was before Congress, creating a special appellate court for patent appeals. Such a court, it is believed, would be able for years to come to keep up with its docket so that within a few months after any patent had been passed on at a final hearing by a circuit court its station throughout the United States could be finally settled. PRACTICE. " Organization of a Legal Busi ness," by R. V. Harris, Canadian Law Times and Review (V. xxviii, p. 157). PRACTICE. " Legal Procedure and Practice in Illinois," by M. J. Gorman, Canadian Law Times and Review. (V. xxviii, p. 147). PRACTICE (BRIEF MAKING). " Is Brief Making a Lost Art?" by Alfred C. Coxe, Yale Law Journal (V. xvii, p. 413). Judge Coxe is very decidedly of the opinion that the brief of to-day is usually too long, that the standard has deteriorated. "Half a century ago, when the law was more of a science and less of a business than it is to-day, the lawyer took a personal pride in presenting to the court the best product of his brain which hard and conscientious labor could produce. He did not delegate this work to stenographers, clerks and office boys. He did not patronize law factories where briefs are quoted at so much per dozen, with a liberal discount for cash. He sat alone in his library, often at night, and did not abandon his task until he had reduced the facts to their last analysis, stated the principal questions of law and had cited one or perhaps two, leading authorities in support of those propositions which might be regarded as debatable. Occasionally there was a short quotation from a report or text-book, but generally the judges were expected to examine the authorities at fountain head. Those having an indirect bearing or based on doubtful premises were ruthlessly cast aside; it was the survival of the fittest. The single purpose of the brief was to put the court in possession of the salient features of the case in as few words as possible. The writer of the brief did not waste his time and energies in arguing inconsequential and technical exceptions. He knew that ' judges are people,' and that even the most careful and conscientious judge can hardly avoid being prejudiced against a

case where the most trival points as well as the most weighty are given the same promi nence. "Such briefs are sometimes met with at the present time, but they are the exception, not the rule. ... It is to-day as difficult to find a hand-made brief as it is to find a hand made shoe. The prevailing characteristics of the modern brief are discursiveness and prolixity. In the'courts of the United States a brief under thirty pages is the pleasing exception and .there are authentic instances where they have exceeded eight hundred printed pages. Valdc dcflendus! What is true of the federal courts, is, I am informed, also true of the state courts. It seems to be thought that quantity and not quanlity is what will most surely convince the courts." "Why it is that the art of brief making has declined? There is more average ability in the profession to-day than ever before. The twentieth century lawyer is as able and indus trious as his brother of a half century ago. What, then, is the reason? May it not be found in the changed environment and the intense activity of modern life? To keep pace with the age, the lawyer is compelled to resort to modern methods. Where there was one report to examine there are now a hundred; where there was one statute to construe there are now fifty; where there was a page of testimony to review there is now a volume. Small wonder that the lawyer of to-day seeks the assistance of digesters, stenographers and typewriters. The result is not a carefully thought-out argument; it is a digest. Every thing bearing on the issue is found in the modern brief — somewhere. It is, however, so hidden jn the wilderness of quotations from record and reports that it is apt to escape the attention of the most careful reader. At almost every term of court several of these bulky volumes appear." Whether Judge Coxe is correct in his comparison of the brief of to-day with that of earlier times this department does not pretend to say. The laudator temporis acii may always fairly be asked if he has not compared the exceptionally good early work with the exceptionally poor of to-day. But