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 respective interests.[1] 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 expenditures.
Recent events, however, afford ground for hope. The efficient organization 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 proceedings 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."[2]
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 educational 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 regulated for them, not by them. . . . The poor have come out of leading-strings, and can not any longer be governed or treated like children.[3]
Sixth, the demands made upon the courts are becoming more exacting. A keener conception of justice is spreading throughout society. Busi-
