598
The Green Bag
any attention to the lawyers. Gentlemen, I charge you that when this case was tried be fore me I gave a verdict for the plaintiff, and I charge you, gentlemen, to do likewise. Re tire and make up your verdict." Of course you know the rest.
are eliminated, and court, counsel and jury get right down to the main facts, without unnecessary delay.
TO FRIENDS ACROSS THE PACIFIC SHOWING THE HONOR IN WHICH JUDGES WERE HELD PRESENTS from suitors to judges were not uncommon, nor, perhaps, unexpected, in New Hampshire in the eighteenth century under the colonial government, says a writer from whom Charles Warren, in his interesting history of the Harvard Law School, quotes an interesting story:— On one occasion the Chief Justice, who was also a member of the council, is said to have inquired, rather impatiently of his servant, what cattle those were that had waked him so unseasonably in the morning by their lowing under his window; and to have been some what mollified by the answer that they were a yoke of six-feet cattle, which Col. had sent as a present to his Honor. "Has he?" said the judge; "I must look into his case—it has been in court long enough." SWIFT JUSTICE IN ENGLAND JUDGE EDWARD PIERCE of Bos ton was much impressed with the rapidity with which the business of the English courts was transacted, in a re cent visit abroad. He was also struck with the feeling of mutual respect be tween the judges and the lawyers. He says :— What impresses a stranger who is visiting the English courts is the thorough manner in which a judge goes into a case, and the com plete mastery he has of the subject-matter in dispute, including all its minor details. The Chief Justice heard, and disposed of four separate murder cases in ten days, and yet each case was so carefully and completely heard that the rights of each of the defend ants were carefully protected. In the Eng lish courts, technical and extraneous matters
WE regret to note that the existence of the Commonwealth Law Re view of Australia has been terminated after a useful and dignified career of six years. The editors express the fear that Australia may not yet have been ready for such a publication, that its lawyers are possibly more interested in the Trade of the Law than in the Science of the Law. We are confident, however, that the work of these scholarly editors has not been in vain, and that the legal pro fession in Australia will soon awake to the fact that a publication of such high standards as the Review is indispensable. HOW THE VILLAIN ESCAPED AS a burglar was trying to break into a house of a citizen of a foreign city the frame work of the second story window to which he clung gave way and he fell and broke his leg. Limping before the justice the next day he indignantly demanded that the owner of the house be punished. "You shall have justice," said the judge. The owner, being summoned, claimed that the accident was due to the poor woodwork, and that the carpenter, not he, was to blame. "That sounds reasonable," said the judge; "let the carpenter be called." The carpenter admitted that the window was defective. "But how could I do better," said he, "when the mason work was out of plumb?" "To be sure," replied the judge, and he sent for the mason. The mason could not deny that the coping was crooked. He explained that while he was placing it in position his attention was distracted from his work by a pretty girl, in a blue tunic, who passed on the other side of the street. "Then you are blameless," said the judge, and the girl was sent for. "I admit," said she, "that I am pretty, but
