The Legal World The Ohio constitutional convention will begin Jan. 1 in Columbus. Many important questions will be brought up, including the initiative, the referendum, the recall, and the possible repeal of the local option system of regulating the liquor traffic. The last constitutional convention in Ohio was held in 1873-74. More than half of the 119 delegates are pledged in writing for the initiative and referendum. The business interests of the state are in favor of the classifica tion of property for purposes of taxation. The matter came up during the last constitutional convention, the proposal being defeated. According to Governor O'Neal of Ala bama, the evil of lynching may be prevented by a simple remedy — the punishment of sheriffs. He said recently : "At present, in Alabama, a sheriff, for permitting a prisoner to be taken from a jail and put to death or mobbed, may, on the instance of the governor, be impeached by the Supreme Court. This provision has been so effective in pre venting violence against suspects or convicted men, in prison or jail, that such violence has practically ceased. My predecessor secured the impeach ment of the most popular sheriff Mobile ever had because he permitted a prisoner to be taken from a jail and lynched, although the lynched man was a mur derer." "From a lawyer's standpoint, the majority of judges are competent men," said Dr. Woods Hutchinson, recently, in Chicago. "That is just the point. A lawyer's education is narrow and he becomes a precedent worshipper out in practice. As a magistrate he doesn't know the conditions that he deals with every day. He makes decisions that touch closely industrial conditions, and
55
he never has seen them. He looks at everything from the standpoint of the law, and the law he gets from a lot of dusty books. Before a man could go on the bench I would make him stay weeks and months in the hospitals, in sane asylums, the slums, in the society of the '400,' everywhere, looking for the causes of things. Then, having acquired a knowledge of man, he would make a good judge. There ought to be a Su preme Court, but it should have no power to annul laws under any pretext." A report submitted by the Com mittee on Judicial Procedure of the Philadelphia Law Association, which has for some time past had under con sideration the subject of delay in the trial of causes in the county courts, contains some comparisons of the time it takes to reach a case for trial in different cities. In Philadelphia that time is from one to three years, but after a case is ordered on the list another year passes before it comes to trial. In New York the time it takes a case for trial is from one and one half to two years in ordinary cases to three to six months in cases preferred by law. In Brooklyn the period is from one and one half to two years. In Chicago, about three months in the municipal court and one year in the county courts. In St. Louis, from three to six months. In Boston, from six months to two years. In Baltimore, from four to eight months. In Cleve land and Buffalo, one year. In San Francisco, thirty days. In New Orleans, two to five months. The New York Society of Medical Jurisprudence at its annual meeting, held Nov. 13, voted its disapproval of the proposed abolishment of the defense of insanity in murder cases, recommended by a committee of the
