Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 24.pdf/161

 138

The Green Bag

juries should be made as special find needs revision, and the changes should ings upon definite questions submitted be first proposed by the bar. to them. All of the foolish practice of The judges administer the law as they requiring a judge to instruct a jury find it. Popular criticism should be upon nice questions of complicated law directed to the methods rather than to with such exactness as to give ground the judges, who ought not to be blamed for new trial or a reversal of the for following precedent, when the whole judgment, if he has made a slip superstructure of jurisprudence rests of the tongue, will be abolished, upon precedent as a foundation. and with this change will go a great I submit these suggestions with the many of the most cogent objections hope that they will at least stir inter to the efficiency of our courts of jus est in the subject. Oregon has set tice. . . . an example to other states in many pro The changes I suggest would be in gressive lines. Here is a field that complete if not supplemented by others, needs her labor. The Oregon Bar Asso less fundamental, but none the less ciation ought to lead in these reforms, necessary to enable, the courts to sim instead of waiting until they are forced plify their proceedings. . . . by the people, who are impatient of the The fact is that our whole system law's injustice and the law's delays.

The Meeting of the New York State Bar Association "/"pHE Reform of Procedure in the impatience with the decisions of courts, A Courts of New York" was the and the reasons underlying the agitachief topic discussed at the thirty-fifth tionf or the recall. Senator Root said in annual meeting of the New York State part: — Bar Association, which met in the New SENATOR ROOT'S ADDRESS York City Bar Association rooms in New York, Jan. 19, 20. "There are several things to be said The meeting was called to order by about this feeling. In the first place, it the president, Senator Elihu Root, and rests upon a misconception as to the true the morning session was taken up with function of a court. It is not the duty of reports of committees and other business our courts to be leaders in reform or to of the Association. espouse or to enforce economic or social In the afternoon Senator Root de theories, or, except within very narrow livered the president's address, his sub limits, to readjust laws to new social ject being "Judicial Decisions and Pub conditions. Undoubtedly every judge is lic Feeling." This address, which is bound to consider two separate elements one of the most timely and important in his decision of a case: One the terms documents for some time on the ques of the law and the other the conditions tion of the recall of judges, endeavored of actual life to which the law is to be to make clear the causes of popular applied, and it is only by considering