The Indiscretions of a Juror dollars from somebody else and Lord
knows whether he ought to have had it. The presiding judge was Mr. Justice Sheridan, a kind old grandfather, who sat, as it were, at the head of the table
and carved the law for us children. Since he has committed the indiscretion of publishing his autobiography, he cannot object to what a juryman says in print. I can never be guilty of contempt of court when he presides, for he is humor ous and lovable, and more respectful to jurymen than to lawyers.
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Rise! women, children, sheriffs, litigants, witnesses, lawyers, jurymen and Miss
Stenographer; the majesty of the law is in its high place! The plain fact is, Mr. Sheridan, an excellent man, is settin’
down. Tradition demands that the court crier shall summon all persons having anything to do before the honorable the justices of the Superior Court to draw near and give attention. This is entirely superfluous, for the clerk has arranged over the telephone for the appearance of people having any busi
The Court is a dual personality, or rather it is the union of a person and an abstraction. This union survives from the time when it was necessary to wrap judges, priests and kings in a sort of superpersonal dignity,
to dazzle the
populace and keep it abjectly dependent upon a mysterious social mechanism. The Court actually is a human forked
ness to do before the honorable the jus tices, etc.
Most of these survivals from
monarchical views of authority and obsolete dictions are amusing.
The
present effect of them is to make court procedure a trifle comic. Usages adapted to one state of society, which linger into a later state, often create an effect
radish like the rest of us, clad in a frock
precisely the opposite from that ob scurely intended when the tradition first
coat and addicted to the incorrigibly democratic habit of putting its feet
arose. Some of the shabby brocade of court etiquette has been cleared out
upon the desk, so that the toes of its boots are visible above the railing which divides its dignity from the other parts of the courtroom. When it comes in,
Some that still hangs in faded shreds is dusty but inoffensive. But some sur
a sherifl in sepulchral tones calls: “Cm o-oart.” Then everybody stands up until the Court is seated. This is a proper courtesy, but the motive of it is not courtesy. Courtesy demands that
gentlemen stand up when other gentle men enter a room and especially when ladies enter. Courtesy would require the jury to stand up when the stenog rapher enters, for she is'a lady. But men and women alike must rise for the judge; the motive is traditional respect for authority; the psychology under it
of our courts, such as gowns and wigs.
viving practices are seriously objec tionable. For instance, the outrageous habit of locking jurymen up. Why? During the
progress of a civil case which lasts three or four days, jurymen can go home nights. But when the case is given to the jury, the jury must go into con tinuous session, under lock and key, until it reaches a verdict. There is no sufiicient reason why we should not go home at the end of a day, and come
back to our work next morning, just as men do in any other business. The imprisonment of a jury tends to hasty
is that authority to maintain itself has to hedge its human commonplaces with
decisions, to the forced verdicts of weary
ceremonials in order to keep our un~ u'itical commonalty humble and agape.
minds incapacitated for thinking. Much better to drop a diflicult case, go home,
