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 American Legal Orators and Oratory

625

so the judge will do it ex oﬂ'icio; Third:

ness

let it be notiﬁed.

"right of way" through his court. The case which I have stated affords

Thus decreed and

signed the Second Judge of First In stance. We attest," followed by the full signatures of judge, the two asistentes, and the legal representatives of the creditor and debtor corporations. This was at the close of the third

dia hébil, or court day, since the suit had been instituted, and thus I “broke all the records” of the courts of Mexico

and

gave

their

foreign

visitor

a sufﬁciently adequate view of the pleadings and procedure in the progress of a civil suit through the civil law

courts of Mexico.

There is no jury,

all evidence is documentary or by deposition, never by oral testimony in open court, and the practice is clear

for the expeditious administration of

cut and well adapted to accomplish even and speedy justice between liti

justice.

gants.

Of course it was possible only

under the peculiar circumstances of this

If I have helped the friendly reader

case, with no defense to be oﬁered and the defendant consenting to waive delays. Nor even then would the result have been accomplished without the

uniform courtesy and complaisance of his Honor Judge Searcy and his asis

to while away an hour agreeably, or have called his attention, compara tively, to some of the needs of better ment in our own system of practice and procedure, I shall feel myself well rewarded for my trip to Mexico and

tentes, who suspended other court busi

for this sketch.

American Legal Orators and Oratory By CHARLES FENNELL, on THE LEXINGTON, Kv., BAR

MERICAN legal oratory is of two distinct kinds, arguments made to the courts on points of law alone, and those addressed to juries on questions

a disinterested person could endure to read them.

In the early days Emmet, Hopkinson, Wirt, Dexter, Martin, Webster, Clay,

of fact sometimes interwoven with,ques

Pinkney, Rowan and others shone with

tions of law.

varying degrees of brilliancy in this art, while later Preston, Hofman, Crittenden, Choate and Benjamin were leaders. Even among these, however, the

Few of the ﬁrst class in our literature are worth the reading as models of elo quence. In order to give full effect to the law in the case our legal orators have neglected, almost without exception, practically all of the graces of oratory.

reader will search in vain for many great and truly eloquent speeches.

Perhaps

many of the best were not reported.

There have been many able argu ments of this kind at all times in our

Luther Martin possessed boundless legal erudition, but positively none of the

history, but few of these are such that

imaginative faculties of the orator, nor