Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/67

PRACTICE OF LAW IN NEW YORK CITY. 41 good judge. The judges form a coterie, and generally all hold themselves aloof from public functions save in discharge of their office. The subject matter of a legal contest rarely justifies all the v^^ords that are uttered about it. Stenography and type-writing are not allies of brevity. The written opinions of our judges are too many and too long. A justice in our Supreme Court was sum- marily deciding a contested question of practice, when the losing lawyer said, " But, your Honor, I have a decision the other way." " Of course you have," said the judge. " Anybody can find in the State conflicting decisions on a question of practice." Except at a jury trial, the lawyers are allowed to talk too much. If our judges would resent carefully and promptly the deliberate mis- statements constantly made by lawyers on arguments, they would even by that do much to elevate the tone of the bar, to ease prac tice, and to save time. The judges dispense patronage in the appointment of receivers and referees, at the rate of from eight to ten every day. In so doing they incur perhaps most of the criticism to which they are sub- jected. A reference to hear and determine should only be resorted to by rich and earnest litigants. It is on the whole the most ex- pensive mode of trial, and the slowest, even when haste is especially sought. The stock company of referees is certainly very limited as compared with the whole bar; and one soon comes to see the tangible influence that brings this or that man into favor of this or that judge. The young briefless son of a powerful politician, of whose learning and ability litigants need never become rampant to avail themselves, is sometimes so favored by references as to carry a private court calendar at his office. It is reported that our Code originally almost reached final enactment, with the provision that a judge might refer an issue to not less than one attorney at law. But the legislature enacted the clause as it is, and did not encroach on the prerogatives of the Bench. Thus the judges are left full play to select as referees men from such as know enough to sign their names where the lawyers indicate, all the way to the most distin- guished men on the roll. They do that so accurately that the name of each referee in the day's list tells fairly closely the quality and magnitude of the case assigned to him. While the day has not yet come when a lawyer may go before every judge at the court and say, "Your Honor," with all the elo- quence that simple truth inspires, yet no lawyer nor litigant now 6