Reform of the Appeal System in Lower Courts By HENRY T. LUMMUS HERE the higher courts do not sit continuously, the community has always felt a need of magistrates
wasted, a trial before the court and jury
and by whom bail may be fixed for the
speedily settled the matter. At any rate, a final trial before any judge with out a jury in a common law action was unknown, in Massachusetts at least, untli 1857, and the system of appeals from
appearance of defendants in some court
justices of the peace was considered a
of competent jurisdiction.
necessity.
before whom persons charged with crime may receive a preliminary examination,
In most
states justices of the peace have long
been entrusted with these judicial or quasi-judicial functions. The next step was to give these jus
tices of the peace jurisdiction over the smaller criminal and civil cases, in the
hope that such cases might be disposed of without taking up the time of a real court.
In the rural districts, at least,
Municipal or police courts have long been established in practically all cities, and in many suburban or rural dis tricts. When they were first estab lished in the place of justices of the peace, the legislators were unprepared to make any great step forward, and therefore made the findings, sentences, and judgments of these courts subject
to the same complete right of appeal.
it was diflicult, if not impossible, to find any suflicient number of persons possessed of the necessary learning and
As our cities became congested with people of every race, speaking every
discretion, who would trouble themselves‘
tongue, there came, as a natural result,
with hearing small cases for the petty fees allowed. The justices of the peace
a great increase in every crime, from violation of city ordinances to murder. The municipal courts came to deal with many thousands of cases every year. So far as the question of sentence is
in general were not fit for the exercise of judicial functions, and therefore a complete right of
appeal was given
which wiped out the finding and the concerned (and that is the only question in the great majority of the smaller sentence or judgment as well. This plan worked satisfactorily in the criminal cases) a competent local court, days of our grandfathers, before our
with experience in the community, ought
cities became filled up by an influx of to be and is a better judge than any people world. arising tion is
from the four quarters of the The number of criminal cases in a homogeneous rural popula usually small, and the higher
courts in the early days had ample time to attend to them all on appeal. In
higher court can be. Yet a sentence is obliterated by an appeal, even where the defendant has entered a plea of guilty. The decisions of a lower court in favor of defendants in criminal cases are final; its decisions against defend
civil cases the time of magistrates, ants are always subject to appeal. Unless lawyers, parties, and witnesses was not the lower court errs constantly and out very valuable; and even if the trial rageously in favor of criminals, a large before the justice of the peace was number of cases will go up on appeal, I
