Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 24.pdf/116

 The Editor's Bag PUBLICITY OF COURT PRO CEEDINGS THE Richeson case in Massachu setts furnished the occasion of a de mand for legislation empowering courts to exclude the public and the press from court rooms where evidence would be likely to be given injurious to the morals of the community. Many of the clergy appeared to favor such a measure. A bill aiming at such a reform was actually introduced on the petition of a Boston attorney. We have already declared, in these pages, that secret trials are opposed to the spirit of our institutions, and we believe that publicity of all court pro ceedings is necessary not only to insure the rights of litigants being preserved but for the protection of the interest of the community in the just outcome of every controversy. The disclosures of the Richeson case, had it ever come to trial, would have been filthy, but as has been observed the openness of court procedure must be maintained at all costs. At the same time, the publicity of court proceedings does not imply the publication of salacious details, and legis lation could undoubtedly prevent abuse by the press of the right of publishing verbatim reports of evidence injurious to the morals of youth, or from comment ing on the evidence in an objectionable manner. The facts of court proceedings can be presented in cold language with

out furnishing alluring details which pander to morbid curiosity. The Vir ginia statute forbidding publication of the details of executions has provedfto be a dead letter, but there is undoubtedly a public sentiment which finds a greater evil in publication of details of obscene testimony, and would lend greater en couragement to the enforcement of; a law designed to avert the greater danger. THOMAS LEAMING IT IS with deep regret that we re cord the death of Thomas Learn ing, Esq., of Philadelphia, in his fiftyfourth year. He was an old-time con tributor to the Green Bag, whose "Phila delphia Lawyers in the London Courts," recently issued, illustrated by his own charming sketches, contains probably the most attractive description ever written of legal institutions and pro fessional etiquette in the mother country. His gifts were of a kind pre-eminently worthy of the ancient and dignified pro fession of the law, and were well sum marized in the following remarks by Russell Duane, Esq., at the memorial exercises held by the Philadelphia bar on December 29: "That stately, dignified form was sym bolical of the ordered mind within and of that aesthetic temperament which in his early days caused him to hesitate in his choice between the life of the artist and the life of the lawyer. Having chosen the career of the law, that same artistic