Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/415

 The Green Bag PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT $4.00 PER ANNUM. SINGLE NUMBERS 50 CENTS. Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, S. R. WRIGHTINGTON, 31 State Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of interest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities, facetiae, and anecdotes.

THE LAYMAN AND LAW REFORM. Amid the many movements for reform now pressing for public attention there is danger of indifference and weariness of flesh. It is inevitable that some, however worthy, which lack dramatic interest and organized support, should be lost in the eddies of the larger current. Lawyers as a class are justly re garded as conservative. This, doubtless, is the necessary consequence of their training in submission to precedent. It is only by the utmost courage and patience that they can usually be aroused to sustained radical effort. It is distressing, therefore, when they really exert themselves to reform glaring anachro nisms, that their efforts should be thwarted by unexpected public conservatism due to very different causes. One of the mediaeval survivals which England has long since buried is the fiction of identity of husband and wife and the prohibition of transfers and contracts between them. - Many of our states, following the English example, have abolished the absurd consequences of this ancient fiction. Massachusetts has gone more slowly in this direction. Last year, however, Mr. Ernst of Boston, who has been active in advocating the removal of the last bar to complete free dom of contract, tried single handed to obtain the passage of his bill in the legislature. This year his bill was supported and advocated by a group of the most eminent lawyers of the bar. There was no public opposition, but the indifference of legislators and the conserva tism of a few uninformed members, sufficed to defeat it. It was a plain case of lack of en lightenment. Though the judges who have had to deal with these questions for years have gone to the.verge of their powers in suggesting in their opinions their dependence on the legis lature to remedy this defect in our jurispru dence, and individual lawyers at last have en

deavored to transmit these instructions to the legislature, laymen, laboring perhaps under an impression that in this was hidden some assault on the sanctity of marriage, forced its defeat. One wonders what would have happened had the bill been supported by a strong state bar association. It would have avoided the objection that it was the work of only a few Boston lawyers. It is to be hoped that another bill, now before the same body, will be given more careful attention. As the result of long controversy between the two professions, physicians and lawyers of Massa chusetts united this year in proposing a bill to eliminate the abuses of medical expert testimony. The plan, in brief, is to authorize the court in its discretion to appoint a medical expert to investigate and. report upon the medical aspect of a case, his report to be prima facie evidence. He is to be paid by the county, but his fees are to be refunded in civil cases by the losing party. Either party may call other medical witnesses, taxing only the usual witness fees, however, in the execution. Though there is some difference of opinion among lawyers as to the propriety of the change, the plan can hardly be regarded as radical in comparison with plans of this sort most frequently suggested; and since all are agreed that the present situation is in tolerable, the experiment is at least worth trying, for its success can be determined only after application. LAWYERS AND THE PREMIERSHIP.

The promotion of Mr. Asquith to be Prime Minister of England leads the Law Journal to note that "It is nearly a hundred years since a lawyer was at the head of the Government. The last practising lawyer to ocpupy the position was Mr. Spencer Perceval, who was