FORMS AND FAILURES OF THE LAW. 751 



FORMS AND FAILURES OF THE LAW. 



Br PHILIP SNYDEK. 



THE law's delay has long been a theme for comment, gibe, criticism, 

 and denunciation. Even lawyers and judges discuss it occasion- 

 ally, in published papers and orations at bar association meetings, but 

 with no radical results. The abuse goes on, and doubtless will until 

 those who suffer from it, the people, take the matter in their own 

 hands and move for redress. They are thoroughly satisfied as to its 

 necessity, but what is most wanted is leadership. Able and unselfish 

 lawyers, if such can be found for it, would here find a promising field 

 for honorable fame. But if there are none to volunteer, the reform 

 will go on without them, and will not stop with the law's delays alone, 

 which are trifling in comparison with the work that needs to be done. 

 Judge William L. Learned, of the New York State Supreme Court, 

 in a paper on " The Law's Delays," makes an admission of striking 

 significance. He says : " In most things we move more rapidly than 

 former generations did. We travel faster ; we send messages across 

 the ocean in a few minutes ; we transact business of large amounts in 

 a short time ; but when we come to our litigations we find the reproach 

 of the law's delays still existing. We have done very little to remedy 

 this great wrong ; indeed, it is doubtful whether in this matter we 

 have not gone backward. Lords Kenyon and Elleuborough tried cases 

 at the rate of twenty-five a day. The very last day that Lord Ellen- 

 borough sat at Guildhall, when he was laboring under great infirmity 

 and weakness, he tried seventeen defended cases." A trial now of 

 seventeen cases a day, even by an able-bodied judge, would probably 

 alarm the bar and result in an early retirement of the judge (if holding 

 place by election), for the reason that his dispatch of business would 

 lessen the emoluments of the lawyers. But the main concession is 

 that while there is advancement in every other field of human efirort, 

 in law alone are we at a standstill, or are retrograding ! A few credit- 

 able changes in procedures have been introduced after prolonged and 

 tedious opposition, such as that an accused party may testify in his 

 own behalf, or that a wife may testify for or against her husband ; 

 but in the main we have the same forms and ceremonies that came 

 into use five centuries or more ago, the same mass of verbiage in legal 

 forms that confuse and perplex, and convey no idea of anything in 

 particular except vacuity. Let a man of ordinary intelligence read a 

 formal indictment for murder, and then ask him to tell what are the 

 ideas expressed, and he can hardly do it with more clearness than if 

 written in Greek or Chaldaic. Take the concluding paragraph of a 

 warranty deed in common use, and we have one hundred and sixty- 

 two words of idiotic verbiage that not one man in a hundred can un- 



