London Legal Letter.
LONDON LEGAL LETTER. N, Feb. 3, 1900. I HAVE from time to time spoken of the difference between the customs and the procedure of the English and American courts. I do not refer to the rules or orders of the courts or the laws upon which they are based, but to the daily life in and about the courts. It is in these little matters of small differences that many busy workers, who are fond of the details of their work, find the greatest interest in visiting our courts. An illustration of some of these petty contrasts was suggested a few days ago. At the recent annual meeting of the Incorporated Law Society at Dover, the president of the society took the grounds that the courts should not sit on Saturday. The very sug gestion indicates the wide difference in the daily life of a judge in England and his brother in America. Here the courts sit on ordinary days from half-past ten to four o'clock, with a mid-day interval of half an hour; on Saturdays they sit from half-past ten to two o'clock without a break. Hence the working hours of a judge in the course of a week are only twenty-eight hours and a half. As the judge gets a salary of twentyfive thousand dollars a year, with ten weeks holiday at the long summer vacation, three at Christinas, two at Easter, and ten or eleven days at Whitsuntide, with a pension of fifteen thousand dollars a year on retire ment, the American judge may naturally think the lot of his brother on the English bench is greatly to be envied, and he may well wonder how the volume of litigation can possibly be got through with under such circumstances. And yet, if the truth were told, I have no doubt that the English judges despatch more business in their short hours than the American judges in the very much longer time they are compelled to remain on the bench. In the first place,
there is no other business transacted in the English courts than the trial of cases. There is no "motion for hour" in the morning; there is no calling of the judge's docket to see what cases are to be tried; there are no applications for the postponement of cases or the carrying over of them to next term, and there is no time given up to " law days " or the arguments of law points. The moment the judge takes his seat, the first case is called and it is proceeded with. If the plaintiff is not " ready," it is dismissed with costs; and if the defendant is unpre pared, there is judgment for the plaintiff, and the next case is called. This may seem harsh and arbitrary, but it is remark able how few cases there are of illness of litigants or of important witnesses. There may be something in the climate that con duces to good health, but there is doubtless a good deal more in the knowledge that even a physician's certificate is discredited, and the realization of the heavy costs which are inflicted when a case is dismissed or judgment by default is taken. It should, of course, be remembered that in nearly every case there are two counsel on each side, a junior and a Queen's counsel, and it is not often that both of them arc engaged elsewhere when a case is called for trial. If it should so happen the conflict of en gagements would be anticipated, and one or other of the counsel would get some one to do the case for him. In the next place, there is no time wasted in the examination of jurors upon this voir dire. Such a thing is practically unknown, although the rules provide for it. The first twelve men called in to the jury box are sworn at once, unless some potent physical infirmity in some one of them is observed by the judge, and the trial is begun. The moment it is ended, the next case is called,
