The Editor's Bag the rights of accused persons. The bench in England is no more superior
713
CONTEMPTS BY NEWSPAPERS
to the Constitution than with us, and
NE of many instructive incidents
there could be no menace to our free institutions in swifter and surer justice. Until a generation ago, England was
mary infliction of a heavy fine for con tempt on one newspaper which had
sufiering, as we are, from the evils of
published matter relevant to the merits
an archaic
of the case. In this country this power of the court is but rarely exercised, but
procedure.
and
needlessly
artificial
The speed with which the
of the Crippen trial was the sum
there is nothing in our law or institutions evil was discovered and the promptitude with which it was remedied, are difficult to understand in this country, where the
to prevent its being employed with nearly if not quite the same vigor.
obstacles
A few heavy fines might do something toward lessening the abuse of the trial
to
reform
seem
infinitely
various and complicated. But England was not the only common law country
to undertake the reform.
Canada and
Australia followed suit, and the present
position of the United States, in its blind worship of the older procedure, is anomalous among free Anglo-Saxon peoples.
The existing system serves
of cases in advance'of the actual deter mination of the merits, by our great metropolitan press, and would lend in creased dignity to the administration of the criminal law in this country.
INSANITY AS A GROUND
to benefit no one, except those lawyers pecuniarily interested in burlesquing
FOR
DIVORCE
the administration of justice and in
N the hearing of testimony before
lowering the standards of professional ethics, and is a form of despotism to which the American people should not
expert witnesses were recently heard for and against the advisability of mak
longer submit.
Once invest our judiciary with the power which will enable it to determine
the English Divorce Commission,
ing permanent insanity a ground of di vorce. Sir Montague Crackanthorpe ofiered the opinion that it was dangerous
causes speedily on their merits, and
to the public welfare for the state to
the other evils incident to the present system will rapidly disappear. It will be unnecessary to appoint additional judges, for the courts will quickly catch up with their arrears, and the evil of
encourage the renewal of married life
conditions.
congested
perhaps,
it would seem to follow that the police
more than any other to deprive the
power of the state should assert itself to dissolve marriage when either party can be proved to be permanently insane. We believe that this would be going too
dockets,
serving,
accused of his constitutional right to
“a speedy and public tria," will exist no longer. The subject is one which bar associations need to urge more
insistently than ever on the attention of legislatures. The initiative of the bar is the chief and perhaps the only agency through which the needed reforms can be brought about.
between a sane and an insane person, and that it was for the public good that the marriage-tie be severed under such
If that is sound reasoning,
far, and that with regard to insanity, at least, the common sense view is that the happiness of the parties and purity of the marriage relation are to be con
sidered paramount to the interest of the state in the issue of such marriages.
It
