Obstacles to Legal Reform Why then did these bills fail to pass? Simply because they were considered to be "lawyers' bills." The average legislator is very suspicious of and bitterly opposed to supporting measures which are favored only by lawyers. The mere fact that he can see no virtue in them himself and nothing which will attract his constituents, and is obliged
to rely upon a lawyer's explanation for the merits of the bill, is sufiicient reason for him to oppose it. He argues
that he can see no excuse for squander ing the valuable time of the legislature and the money of the taxpayers in pass ing laws for the sole benefit of the lawyers. His patriotism is aroused when you attempt to show him that the measure is of far more importance to the
state than his bill to make the birthday of Christopher Columbus a holiday or to place a tax on bachelors.
If enough
publicity is given to the matter, his constituents will usually ratify his posi tion. When all, or nearly all, the lawyers combine to secure the passage of a measure, independent of party sanction,
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or embarrass the majority in the passage of any beneficial legislation. The greater the merit of the bill the greater the
need of keeping the majority from passing it and getting the credit for so doing. One other plan has been proposed by which the unsatisfactory conditions now admitted to exist may be removed, i.e.,
by adopting a short practice act to be supplemented by a Code of Rules of Court, prepared by the judges them selves and amended by them from time
to time as conditions might require. But again the legislature must be called into use, and where is the political party which would dare to father such an
innovation, even if it were possible to elect a legislature favorable to such a measure? Once let such a plan be seriously considered and every socialist, labor leader, anarchist, trades-unionist, direct primary advocate, pseudo-patriot and yellow journal would excel them
selves in their denunciation of the courts and the means resorted to to deprive the people of their sacred rights for
that is a signal for all the lay members to
which our fathers so bravely fought
combine to defeat it, and so matters
and bled and for which they themselves care nothing except to_criticise. Such centralization of power in the courts will not be permitted until the state of the public mind has been materially altered. In the matter of reforming the legal procedure in this country, as in most other things, it is much easier to point
drag along from one session to another. Of course, the spirit of party politics, which since the Civil War has largely usurped the spirit of patriotism, is often the cause for the defeat of many measures of merit in every line. That our citizens have been educated to look upon any movement receiving the en
dorsement of a political party other than their own with disfavor, is little short of actual disgrace. The minority
party is supposed to resort to every effort, honorable or otherwise, to defeat Moundsville, W. Va.
out defects than to suggest real rem edies, and it is far easier to do both
than to secure the enactment of laws by the state legislatures remedying the defects.
