2 4 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



occasionally block each other. In the history of the Erie Railway, the 

 interference of some of the Supreme Court judges of New York with 

 each other assumed scandalous proportions. The contending parties 

 instituted proceedings before competing judges friendly to their respec- 

 tive interests. 8 The popular impression that the courts are organized 

 to give business to lawyers and to afford jobs to place-hunters rather 

 than to promote the ends of justice is by no means groundless. The 

 cost of our judicial system to litigants plus the excessive cost saddled 

 upon the taxpayers will sooner or later attract the scrutiny of the public. 

 Social legislation that calls for increased expenditures and upon which 

 men have set their hearts will compel economy in our judicial ex- 

 penditures. 



Eecent events, however, afford ground for hope. The efficient or- 

 ganization of the Chicago Municipal Court shows what can be done. 

 Municipal Courts are gradually taking the place of those over which 

 Justices of the Peace preside in other cities. The Police Magistrate's 

 Court in New York City has been reorganized in two divisions each of 

 which has a directing head. The dominant note of the reports and pro- 

 ceedings of The American Bar Association manifests less pride in the 

 courts and is more given to criticizing the law and its administration. 

 The courts are suffering the consequences of too much veneration. They 

 need the stimulating effect of a more critical public opinion. " The 

 law needs perennially an infusion of ideas from outside professional 

 circles." 9 



In the fifth place, the seat of authority is gradually shifting toward 

 the popular mind. This is a fact of fundamental importance and is one 

 with which it is as useless to quarrel as with the tides. Socialism and 

 trade-unionism are redistributing the center of authority. Our educa- 

 tional system, the railroad, the steamship, the telephone and telegraph, 

 the postal system, the newspaper and cheap magazine, in short, all the 

 facilities which quicken the popular intelligence, are opposed to making 

 a fetish of the constitution and of the courts. Judicial infallibility as 

 well as infallibility in the matter of religion is out of keeping with the 

 spirit of the times. It is too late to return to the theory of dependence 

 according to which 



the lot of the poor, in all things which affect them collectively, should be regu- 

 lated for them, not by them. . . . The poor have come out of leading-strings, and 

 can not any longer be governed or treated like children.™ 



Sixth, the demands made upon the courts are becoming more exacting. 

 A keener conception of justice is spreading throughout society. Busi- 



s Charles F. Adams, Jr., and Henry Adams, "Chapters of Erie and other 

 Essays," pp. 1-99 passim. Pages 18-24 are especially illuminating. 



» Professor Eoscoe Pound, op. cit., p. 319. 



ioJohn Stuart Mill, "Principles of Political Economy," edited by W. J. 

 Ashley, pp. 753 and 757. 



