Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/357

 r

The Appointment of Mr. justice Hughes and never will pass under a free govern ment. Our own country is especially fruitful of legal questions which are also largely economic and sociological.

These questions cannot be settled by

335

newspapers and pamphlets. They must be argued out in the courts, and in

arguing them, twice armed is he who, in addition to a knowledge of the law. possesses "the art of speaking well."

Northpart, N. Y.

The Appointment of Mr. Justice Hughes HE appointment of Governor Charles Evans Hughes of New York as Asso ciate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, succeeding Judge Brewer, has been enthusiastically received alike by the press of the country and by the legal profession. The press, as a rule, sees nothing to ﬁnd fault with and everything to praise in the qualities which he has displayed in his public career. Thus the Outlook says: "His experience in public life has all been gained during the new era in which so many fresh problems of industrial, commercial, and national life have created new conditions to which the interpretation of our constitutional and tatutory law must be applied. His creation of the Public Service Oom missions, and his veto of the Long Sault Charter, to cite only two examples, indicate that in dealing with the great question of corporation control and regulation. his ﬁrst thought is for the interest of all the people. But they indicate no less that he recognizes the corporation as a great instrument of modern industry which needs, not to be hampered but to be regulated in the public interest."

There is always danger, however, the Outlook continues, that a judge, secluded as he is in his study and isolated from the practical realities of the world, should prefer judge-made precedents and cold abstractions to the warm facts of life. But from this danger it believes that Mr. Justice Hughes will be free'.— "His veto of the two-cent-fare bill and the Coney Island ﬁve-cent-fare bill shows his conviction that legislation should be related to the actual facts of life rather than based upon a priori theories. He is interested in life. He does not permit his lawyer's love of the law to blind him to vital con ditions."

The New York Times lays particular emphasis on Mr. Hughes’ soundness of judg ment and his disinterestedness, and thinks that "the Supreme Court will be strengthened by his appointment." To quote :—

"Governor Hughes is known to us not only as what men call a sound lawyer, learned in the law and experienced in its practice, but he is a man who by nature and acquirement is possessed of those eminent qualities that make up the judicial temperament. Mr. Hughes is a reformer, but he is as far as possible from being a radical. The reforms he advocates are for the public welfare, they are the reforms of common sense, they are reasonable reforms. He has never been in danger of being swept off his feet by unreasoning agitation or hysterical appeal for the immediate and complete reorganization of human society. He has given no evidence of entertaining the, belief that whatever has been done in the past was inevitably and hope lessly bad, and that everything to be done in the future must be done in a very different way if it is to be good. Mr. Hughes is not only a good lawyer, ‘a sound and exceedingly capable Executive, but he is as well something of a philosopher; but a philosopher of conservatism and continuance, not of overthrow and destruction." The Democratic World is not less eulogistic,

declaring that Governor Hughes has "shown in a marked degree the temperament of a great judge" and that the appointment will “go far toward restoring popular conﬁdence in the Taft administration." There is not room to quote here the praise of other in ﬂuential newspapers in all parts of the country. The sentiment of the legal profession is well expressed by the New York Law journal, which observes :— "There may be expected in Justice Hughes an independence and boldness fully as great as charac terized justice Peckam and perhaps even a greater facility and adeptness than were evinced by Justice Brewer in applying and moulding legal principles to accomplish just and broad-minded results. Governor Hughes's message on the Federal Income Tax Amendment—whether one agrees with him or not-and his recent opinion in the Holistot Inter-State Extradition case indicate his calibre upon the important classes of questions he will be called upon to consider. The Bar of New York may be congratulated upon having a representa tive in the Supreme Court in all respects worthy of the tradition of Nelson and Peckham."