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The Green Bag

At common law, a person eating poached eggs, even though he knew them to be poached, was not guilty of receiving stolen goods, neither was a person eating stolen goods, knowing them to be stolen, guilty of eating poached eggs unless the eggs were poached as well as stolen. This rule has nowhere, to our knowledge, been changed by statute. But before we answer our correspondent we would like to ask: Why did he eat the poached eggs, knowing them to be stolen? OVERBURDENED COURTS A letter from Chief Justice Lucilius A. Emery was read at the recent annual meeting of the Maine State Bar Association, in which he expressed his own personal views regarding the delay in the decisions upon cases in the law court. He wrote: — . . This delay is not owing to the indolence or incapacity of the members of the law court, but is owing to the insistence of the bar and people that they shall do so much nisi prius and equity work. . . . While the work of the law court is not so harrassing and exhausting as that of the practising lawyer, it is yet work requiring close concentration and often protracted mental application, with consequent "brain fag" at times when no man can work. The justices need not only time for study, but time for rest and recuperation. Now I am not complaining. I do not ask for anything. I am only justifying, insisting that the justices are doing the best they can under the system. In the discussion before the Illinois State Bar Association last June of the proposal that appeals from the Appellate Courts of Illinois to the Supreme Court be granted by writ of certiorari at the discretion of the latter court, one of the members (Proceedings, pt. I, pp. 204-5), in speaking for the advantages of the writ, looked at the subject of the law's delays from a different angle: — Mr. Herrington— I do not believe the Supreme Court is overburdened with work. I have known the Supreme Court a long time [laughter]; I want to tell

you now that I knew those men a long time ago. I have been at the bar for thirty years in this state; there is only one man alive today that signed my license, and that is Judge Craig in Galesburg. When I was first at Ottawa there were four hundred cases on their docket; there are not that many now. Then these Judges were given a stenographer and type writer, and when they got down to Spring field they were going to grind out the decisions. .... Now, just as soon as they have a recess they make a break for their respective homes, as all good husbands do, and we get the decisions when they get ready to give them to us. That is about the way of it. [Laughter and applause.] Mr. Page—I would like to wager some thing that the Justices of the Supreme Court who signed this man's license did not know the effect it was going to have on him or they wouldn't have done it. [Laughter and applause.] No doubt the bar, without meaning to offer an accusation of indolence or incapacity, sometimes errs in expecting the bench to turn out more work than can reasonably be demanded of it. Chief Justice Emery's statement of the imperfectly comprehended duties which may be imposed upon a court, probably reveals a situation which is typical of many jurisdictions. A BARRISTER'S ANECDOTES Mr. Crispe, K.C., who is retiring from active practice, told several stories at a farewell lecture in London recently. The late Mr. Commissioner Kerr, he said, when alluding to the perjury that was daily com mitted in law courts, had remarked, "David said in his haste that all men are liars. If he had been sitting here in this court he would have said the same thing at his leisure." A little girl, when pressed by a judge as to whether she knew what would become of her if she told lies, said she was sure that she would go to "a naughty place," whereupon the judge said, "Let her be sworn; she knows a great deal more than I do." Sir George Jessel, when Solicitor-General, was having a passage of arms with the late Chief Justice Cockburn, when a "little creature at the bar," leaning over to Serjeant Parry, said, "Why,