328
The Green Bag
void ab initio and confers no rights; and all parties are presumed to act with reference to and knowledge of the legal right of a court, officer or municipal body, and of its or his jurisdiction. If the matter done is interlocutory or inter mediate, redress should be obtained by appeal. Many other things in writs are defective, and some of the writs need abolishing. But all this is foreign to my subject. What I was going to say is that we need a code of procedure applicable to every state, and to any court in any state in the Union. A national code of procedure if you please. I hear you say that this is impossible. It is nothing of the sort. Mind, I do not mean that this national code be made to apply to special proceedings such as election contests, etc., as this would involve a national jurisprudence, a thing I con cede to be visionary. But it is not impossible for us to have a systematic and uniform code of procedure dealing with general procedure. Why should the grounds for a general attachment be different in the various states; and why the proceedings to obtain that attachment and matters thereunder? It could just as well be regulated by a code adopted to the use of each state as to one. So with all provisional and extraordinary remedies. So with par ties to actions, manner of commencing actions, process, venue of actions, trial, verdict, judgment, new trial, appeal, proceedings upon appeal both from inferior and to higher courts. So with pleadings, and writs, and all other matters relating to General Procedure in courts, not affecting or relating to special proceedings given under a special chapter relating to a particular subject, such as elections, stock running at large, and others similar. But I hear you say, how about the
judicial constructions of this fanciful code? Will they not be as various as the judicial minds of the various courts? Perhaps, sir, you are slightly right — at least you have found an apparent objection, which can, however, be an swered. It is true that such a code would necessarily be construed by the various courts of the Union in the various actions, and perhaps, or even probably, the construction of the states might differ somewhat and in some instances. However, this could easily be remedied by a law book gotten up by some of the large companies, or perhaps all of them would have one, giving each section of the code, and its construction as given by the various courts of the states; and this book could even separate the states, and give each under its name, and iden tify the section construed of course. It can readily be seen that the advan tage of such a code would be far-reaching. It would enable any lawyer in any state to practise law in any other state, with out being forced to employ a lawyer in the foreign state to attend to the case; or in other words it would make a general code for a lawyer to understand, after which he would be equal to all other lawyers anywhere, at least as to the matter of procedure. It would enable a lawyer to go to any state at any time and commence practising where he left off in the other state, if he wanted to change his home. It would prevent a lawyer at forty-five from feeling himself a prisoner in the state wherein he had been practising for twenty years, and enable him to go elsewhere if he so desired. It would, also, be beneficial to the client; for who does not know how often a client loses his rights by mistreatment of a foreign lawyer chosen from a book, or by refraining to sue rather than to be forced to employ some
