The Injustice of Justice.
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THE INJUSTICE OF JUSTICE. THAT sentence, if he had so chosen, could have become appropriately the epigrammatic title of the recent address made by Joseph H. Choate before the Am erican Bar Association immediately previ ous to his unanimous choice as its president. In the course of his discourse, pronounced at the convention in Saratoga, he took as a partial text Hamlet's sarcasm as to the law's delays, he criticised the abuses of codifica tion, and those of the politics which brought judgeships to auction, and in scholarly style he eulogized the Saxon trial by jury; differ entiating it in fervid oratory with the recent jury farce in Paris wherein the novelist Zola was leading actor, and which the May num ber of The Green Bag for 1898 commented upon so fully. The injustice of legal methods was rather foreshadowed than portrayed, for the orator well knew that his hearers could find for themselves details in current newspapers and the issues of court reports. In these latter his hearer-lawyers in almost every State could find reports about final adjudications of con tested actions given some years subsequent to their initiation, and thereby emphasizing Mr. Choatc's plaints. He professed no ex perience in the matter beyond New York, . and in this behalf remarked " while, unhap pily, in our city, it takes nearly two years, except in preferred cases, to- reach a jury case for trial, every intervening week from the day of its commencement may be filled with a distinct and separate motion. Surely this fruitful source of delay could be and ought to be cut up by the roots. Then the avoidable delays subsequent to appeal, wait ing for years for the appeal from judgment on the jury's verdict to be heard and dis posed of, ought also to be remedied and prevented for the future. Of course, my ex perience is mostly confined to the New York
courts, but there it does now take nearly three years from verdict to final judgment in the Court of Appeals, making five years from commencement of suit to the recovery of one's just dues by suit, and all this delay — not an hour of it chargeable to the jury — avoidable and therefore inexcusable." President Choate has never had legislative experience, or he might have charged many of these legal delays upon lawyers them selves; and especially upon legislators of the rural districts. It is well known in the pro fession of his State that these latter are main ly responsible for the evil he thus denounced : "our own New York code alone, has grown to a monster of more than 3,600 sections, each section pregnant with some procedure." It is well known that every rural lawyer in the New York legislature upon first taking his seat rushes to make some statutory amendment that in a certain (or rather un certain) way is to aid his local practice, or a personal case, and one which may em barrass the courts or lawyers of the large city; and so the universality of justice suf fers an injustice. In a further Balaklava-like charge upon legal hindrances Mr. Choate adds : " But there are most grievous delays between the joining of issue of fact and the opportunity to try the case before a jury, and further griev ous delays between a just and righteous ver dict and the realization of the money or property represented by it — delays at both ends, for which the jury are in no wise re sponsible, and which are the direct result of vicious legal machinery, capable in a large degree of alleviation and cure." Unfortu nately President Choate did not suggest methods of alleviation, or systems of cure; but it will be for the proper committees of the American Bar Association to make the proper remedies.
