the truth. In the strictness and technicality with which we enforce those rules we go far beyond England or, so far as I know, any of her colonies. I think we stand alone among civilized countries in the obstacles that we interpose to the giving of testimony in the most natural way. How common it is to see a witness trying to tell his story, hindered and worried and confused by being stopped here and there again and again by objections as to irrelevancy and immateriality and hearsay, when what he is trying to say would not do the slightest harm to any one and would merely help him to state what he knows that is really competent and material. Such a rule as I have now mentioned would take away the faint hope of a technical reversal which underlies such objections; but the legal right to object would continue, and incessant technical objections would probably continue to prolong many trials and impede the speedy ascertainment of the merits of many causes unless the bar in good faith were to accept as a rule of conduct that no objection should be made or point raised not really affecting the merits.

I presume upon your not remembering something that I said at Rochester a year ago, to repeat that we are too apt at the American bar to act as if in litigation we are playing a game, with the judge as referee of the game. Only the bar itself can cure that, and realize the highest usefulness of a noble profession by devoting its learning, its skill, and its best effort to securing for every suitor, as promptly as possible, a fair and final judgment on the merits of his case.

The complication of our procedure is only one phase of a general tendency affecting the whole field of government and law in the rapidly developing, intricate, and interdependent social conditions of our time. In the fundamental act at the polls, when the sovereign people select those who shall make the laws and shall administer them, the voter has placed in his hands a ballot of enormous size, sometimes too large to be

spread out fully in the voter's booth, and with such a vast array of names for such a great number of offices to be filled, and with so many questions to be decided in the affirmative or negative, that the best trained and best informed mind must fail to do its whole duty intelligently. The need for simplification here is recognized by the advocates of the short ballot, who have my most sincere good wishes.

The mass of our statutes has grown so great that the volumes constitute a library in themselves and require another library of indexes and digests and guides to ascertain what the law is. We are continually trying to simplify this condition by consolidations and revisions and codifications, all of which are useful.

The mass of judicial reports has grown so great that it begins to seem as if before long we shall have to burn our books like the Romans and begin anew. And indeed, where decisions can be found in support of every side of every proposition, authority is in a great measure destroyed and we do begin anew in determining by the light of reason which authority shall be followed. I wish that our judges could realize officially what so many of them agree to personally — that restating settled law in new forms, however well it is done, complicates rather than simplifies the administration of the law; that the briefest of opinions usually answers the purpose of the particular case; and that the general interests of jurisprudence justify reasoned opinions only when some question of law is determined which has not been determined before by equal authority.

On every side the increasing complication of life calls for vigorous and determined effort to make the working of our governmental system more simple. Our primary concern as lawyers associated to consider the public aspects of our professional work and to promote the usefulness of the profession to the community, is with our own procedure.

JUDICIAL DECISIONS AND PUBLIC

FEELING

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE NEW YORK STATE BAR ASSOCIATION IN

NEW YORK CITY, JANUARY 19, 1912

HERE appears to be an increasing tendency among

TH

judicial decisions do not agree with our wishes.

The provisions for the recall of judges already adopted in some states and widely advocated in others are an exhibition of this impatience and a demand for more unchecked opportunity to make the judges feel its effect.

A distinguished judge is reported to be considered for promotion to the Supreme Bench. Thereupon there arises, not a discussion regarding his ability or integrity or experience, but an outcry that he ought not to be promoted because he decided a two-cent fare case against the wishes of some people or many people.

The Court of Commerce decides that the Interstate Commerce Commission has taken too broad a view of its powers under the law in a particular case and the immediate reaction is, not an acceptance of the decision and a proposal to change the law so as to make the powers broader, or an appeal from the decision in order to show by argument that it is wrong, but the drafting and introduction of a lot of bills to abolish the court.

A court of great authority decides that a particular form of employers' liability law contravenes the rules established by the Constitution and the immediate reaction is, not to procure the enactment of a statute which does not contravene those rules, or to procure a modification of the rules so that they

will permit the statute, but it is to condemn the court for not entertaining a different opinion.

There are many indications that, in varying degrees, in different parts of the United States this method of treating the decisions of courts receives popular sympathy. A gradual decrease of respect for judicial decisions can be perceived.

The general respect for the decisions of our courts, which has sustained the judicial branch of our Government as a distinctive and necessary part of our constitutional system, has been based upon the idea that judicial decisions are something quite distinct and different from the expression of political opinions or the advocacy of economic or social theories. Profoundly devoted to the reign of law, with its prescribed universal rules as distinguished from the reign of men with their changing opinions, desires and impulses, our people have always ascribed a certain sanctity to the judicial office, have invested its holders with a special dignity, and have regarded them in the exercise of their office with a respect amounting almost to reverence, as above all conflicts of party, and of faction, because these officers are the guardians of the law as it is. Our people have been imbued with a deep sense of the truth that upon the preservation of the law as it is at every moment in its course of continuous change and development, depend the preservation of order, the prevention of anarchy, the protection of the weak against the aggression of the strong, the perpetuity of free institutions, the continuance of liberty and justice; matters of infinitely greater concern than all the new proposals which excite the activity and controversy of parties and political leaders, of critics and reformers.

If this view is to be changed and the decisions of our courts are to be considered in the same way and upon the same presumptions and with no greater respect for authority than in the case of political opinions, the authority of the courts will