Brief Notes on the NortJiem Securities Case. in the frequent setting aside of verdicts and the granting of new trials. From this posi tion, in effect that of a thirteenth juryman with countervailing vote, it would not be a very abrupt, and certainly not an illogical step, to make the court the only juryman. With the court thus sitting as judge .ami jury, it is believed, also, that there would be a decreasing number of those meretricious claims which encumber the docket of our courts, and whose sponsors are ever encour aged by the hope that by some hocus-pocus they will succeed in getting their cases by the court to find favor with an undiscriminating jury. Even now the foundations of this vener able institution would seem to be crumbling in the legislation which has been enacted in a few of the States, making less than a unani mous vote of a jury in civil cases sufficient
563
for a verdict, and in the constitutional au thority given for such legislation, in others. Many lawyers, too. impressed by the incon veniences and delays attending jury trials are making a practice of waiving the right to a jury, and trying their cases to the court by stipulation. Times change and men and institutions change with them. This is a fast moving nge, with a tendency to cast aside cumbrous and unnecessary weights that retard its progress. Conservative as is the law, it is not uninfluenced by the spirit of the age, and will ere long, it should seem, lift from its administration the incubus of a mode of trial which but for the traditional glamour that has been thrown about it would long since have been consigned to the limbo of forgot ten and discredited procedure.
BRIEF NOTES ON THE NORTHERN SECURITIES CASE. BY FRANCIS R. JONES. bolical way the irresistible evolution of mo I. dern commercial tendencies. As such it is J. The so-called Sherman anti-trust law in itself a restraint of trade. is a purely penal statute. It prohibits the 4. If the statute is to be construtcl strict doing of certain things. It is like a liquor ly, it is impossible logically to reach the con statute. Intent is not an ingredient. It is. clusion of the Circuit Court without over therefore, to be construed strictly by all the ruling the law in regard to the status of a tenets of statutory construction. corporation, which was settled by the brill 2. The prohibition against combinations iant opinion of Mr. Chief Justice Taney, in restraint of trade ought, therefore, to be in Ohio and Mississippi Railroad Company construed in a strictly legal sense. Restraint r. Yheeler, i Black 286. For a person, of trade is an historical legal doctrin", which real or artificial, cannot conspire with itself. has prescribed limits. The combination nf two competing persons, real or artificial, is II. not within those limits. If, on the other hand, the Supreme Court 3. Even if the statute were not a penal of the United States should take the view one, it still ought to be construed most that the statute is a salutary one, and as strictly, since it is in every way detrimental to such ought to be given full scope, reasons of trade and commerce. Tt harasses in a dia-
