Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

will be thus formed, or at least a spirit of hostile criticism encouraged, which will follow him out of the court room, and become a characteristic of his life.

An English barrister, alluding to this tendency towards contradiction of what others say, acquired at the bar, remarks that

"In many a case the caustic tone, assumed at the outset as a professional weapon, becomes habitual and, without the speaker's knowledge, gives more pain within his home, than in Westminster Hall." 1

So a lawyer must be on his guard against bringing the technical practices and habits of the bar in matters of procedure into the intercourse of general society.

It is said of Lord Chief Justice Tenterden, to whom forms were of the essence of any judicial establishment, that once, at a "circuit dinner," at which he presided,

66

having asked a country magistrate if he would take venison, and receiving what he deemed an evasive reply: 'Thank you, my Lord, I am going to take boiled chicken,' his Lordship sharply retorted, 'That, sir, is no answer to my question; I ask you again if you will take venison, and I will trouble you to say yes or no, without further prevarication!" " 2 The story, true or not, is no bad illustration of a real pitfall into which every lawyer and every judge runs some risk of falling. It is sadly easy for him to sink into the condition of an habitual faultfinder.

1 Jeaffreson, A Book about Lawyers, p. 324.

2 Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices of England, New York, 1873, Vol. IV, pp. 302, 343.

The man who is always carping, and contradicting, and pointing to weak spots in the conduct of other people, will make few friends, and deserve few. There is to every trial lawyer a subtle and half hidden temptation to drop into such a mental habit. Most of them resist it effectually. A few fall under the spell, but there is no reason why any should. The contests of the court house can be absolutely dropped when the case is finished; nor, if conducted in a proper spirit of professional fraternity, need they ever lead to ill-feeling at the bar. Still less need they disturb the lawyer's social relations with anybody.

A lawyer represents his client's case, but not his client's personal feelings or qualities of character. His conscience remains in his own custody. As was said by the late Thomas H. Hubbard, the founder of a lectureship in Legal Ethics in the Law Department of Union University," the controversy, with all its attendant exasperations, is the client's controversy. Its asperities, its irritations, its impulses, its interests, are not the lawyer's, save as he receives them from the client. If he receives them in bulk, as a common carrier receives all goods that are offered; if, as the servant of the client, he carries them through all the portals and into the temple of justice; if he surrenders his own convictions to the wishes of his client, then he gives to his cases the elements that retard justice and bring the practice of the law into disrepute. He obtrudes upon the court the passion, the prejudice, the unreason of the client. These should be left outside the court-house door. The

controversy that crosses the threshold should be a controversy sifted by the intelligence and shaped by the conscience of the lawyer. It should be the essence of honest difference in the assertion of rights, not the turmoil of personal dispute." 1

A lawyer must, no doubt, also be on his guard against allowing his disbelief in the testimony of a hostile witness to lead to a line of treatment on cross-examination, which is unfair or unnecessarily rough. Most men mean to tell the truth on the witness stand, and a lawyer must always remember that every witness must testify from his own standpoint, which cannot, in mind or body, be precisely that of any one else.

Nor does a harsh cross-examination, under most circumstances, make a favorable impression either on the court or jury. An English judge once interrupted a discourteous and savage cross-examination by saying to the offending barrister, “You seem to think that the art of cross-examination is to examine crossly."

There is a real danger here of injuring one's client, while trying to serve him, and of injuring oneself, as well. It is not always a danger apparent to the lawyer, himself, nor therefore one against which it is easy to guard. At best a court of law is not a school of good manners. It has to do with people of all sorts and conditions. In every trial two interests are opposed and each has its chosen champion. A certain duty of antagonism is involved, on the part of each of them.

1 Lectures delivered before the Students of Law Department of Union University, 1903, p. 16.

Each is to keep out all testimony which has no bearing on the cause, or which is adverse to his client, and is of a kind which is excluded by legal rules. He must act promptly if he does his duty in these respects. He cannot always stop to make a nice choice of words. He is often tempted to speak sharply to a witness or to the opposing lawyer, and is not unlikely sometimes to yield to the temptation. As often as he does, he increases the risk that his professional habits may prejudice the peace of his own household.

3. The Charge that Legal Procedure is Antiquated and

Unfair

The necessity of known rules of procedure. The chain of ignorance, procedure, knowledge, and justice. Remedies presuppose rights. Summum jus, summa injuria. The uncodified common law. Its constant change. The Roman law never fully codified. How courts add to law. Violation of rules of procedure may defeat a meritorious cause. Artificiality in rules of evidence. Is an incident of our jury system. Becomes less as jurors have more education. The uses and abuses of a jury. Its guidance by the court. Excessive multiplication of law reports. Unofficial reporting. The citations of decisions.

The whole of that law which is administered by lawyers is bound up with the modes and forms of judicial procedure. It cannot be otherwise. Courts exist to do justice between man and man, but always by following certain prescribed rules and methods. To give them an opportunity to act, causes of controversy must be brought before them, and brought before them in a proper way. Judges do not play the part of policemen,

and walk the streets with a view to preventing wrong or arresting the wrong doer. Nor do they take the place of teachers and announce certain doctrines to which mén generally must conform. They are only concerned with announcing or recognizing such as govern certain relations of the parties to a particular law suit. The steps that throw upon them this responsibility are such as only lawyers know how to take. In early political societies they are very formal. Civilization simplifies them but, however high it may rise, courts still remain a device for doing justice through a prescribed mode of procedure. This mode is prescribed because it is generally deemed fair, or else was at one time generally so deemed and is not now generally deemed unfair. It is prescribed in advance of any resort to it; and by the State. Being a body of public rules by which all are bound, and to substantial obedience to which all are entitled, this obedience is a necessary condition of getting justice or doing justice.

Chief Justice Bleckley of Georgia has put this very clearly:

"The problem for the judicial mind as a whole, whether all on the bench or some in the jury box, is to pass from ignorance to justice. Every Court, (by which I mean the aggregate of the deciding power,) though it may know beforehand the general law and facts common alike to all cases, or to all of any given class, is ignorant of the special law and facts involved in any particular case. While this ignorance continues justice is not discernible, and hence there is no way to pass immediately from ignorance to justice unless by mere chance, by casting lots or otherwise

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »