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HEN George the Third, as a young man, was learning the violin, it is said that he asked his conscientious instructor for an opinion on his playing. The old man replied: "Your Majesty, students of the violin may be divided into three classes: those who do not play at all, those who play very badly, and those who play very well. Your Majesty is now in the second class." The courts of the United States may be similarly classified into those which are not organized at all, those which are organized very badly, and a few which are organized very well. The main difficulty for the critic is in deciding whether most of them fall into the first or second class.

Current studies of American government in other departments have been most effective in result when they have begun with the analysis of organization. An unorganized or badly organized department of government no more can be expected to produce a maximum of results than can a business which has no head, no system of bookkeeping or accounts, no facts as to cost of materials or of the manufacturing process. American government, more especially the government of cities, has in the last decade been greatly improved by constructive legislation based upon studies of organization resulting in the application of correct principles of administration to the business of government.

Efforts are now being made to apply to the problem of efficient

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justice, in part at least, the methods which have been successfully applied to efficient administration in other departments. Hence we have a growing interest in the machinery of the courts. The word here used does not mean procedure, practice, rules of law, or matters which, however much they may need reforming, are strictly law subjects. It means the system or lack of system by which the courts are organized for their work.

Any business man would say that for the effective operation of a going business on a large scale an adequate business organization is essential. Such an adequate organization includes at least an officer or group of officers having power to produce coördination of its various parts and a conscious general plan governing their actions; second, a system by which the work done in various branches is carefully checked up so that responsible supervising officers and directors may know what is done and not done and who is entitled to commendation or blame; third, a system by which the time and attention of expensive and important officers are devoted, not to details, but to the more serious work of their departments; fourth, a system by which, through specialization, certain officers may become expert in the performance of important work; fifth, a system by which the directors and officers placed in responsible authority are given power in proportion to their responsibility and are not, for example, handicapped by multitudinous by-laws of stockholders who meet annually; sixth, a clear, intelligent, and complete audit or report of proceedings made annually or oftener, that the stockholders may know how the stewardship of the officers and directors has been conducted.

Under such a business organization, if things go wrong the opportunity for intelligent criticism is great. It does not require guesswork. There are definite facts which may readily be put together in placing the blame. These facts may be used as a basis for correction and reform.

Speaking broadly, substantially all those desirable qualities are lacking in the organization of the courts. As an illustration of the lack of organization in the courts take, for example, the so-called Judiciary Law of New York, which is the law under which the principal courts of the state are supposed to be organized. It is, of course, the work of the legislature and not of the courts themselves, but it is under the so-called system which this Judiciary Law provides that the courts are required to act. This law occupies 200 pages of the Consolidated Laws of the State and consists of nearly 800 sections. The entirely justified first impression is that it is in greater part a mere

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piece of patch-work devised very largely for the purpose of creating jobs for a miscellaneous class of clerks, assistant clerks, confidential special clerks, criers, messengers, interpreters, reporters, and stenographers, since all these officers are distinctly and separately provided for, even to the very counties in which they shall be located and in which they shall enjoy their salaries. There is far more space devoted to the clerks, stenographers, attendants, and messengers than to the officers whose positions, ordinarily considered, are more important: the lawyers and the judges. If the matters unessential to a judicial organization were stricken from this law, it could be contained in a fifth of its present bulk.

Without attempting to go into detail, let us consider the organization of the metropolitan Supreme Court of New York City. Here we have a court in which, in New York County (old New York City), twenty-seven Supreme Court justices conduct trials. This is the court in which all the important litigation, involving sums in excess of $2,000, and all equity cases are tried in the richest section of America, a court in which thousands of citizens attend every year as witnesses, litigants, and jurors. It is a court for which correct and adequate organization obviously is essential. Yet trial judges who conduct this court have no power to make rules for their own government. They have no presiding justice. Even the stenographers and court officers are appointed for them and their rules are laid down upon them by their associates who, by appointment, constitute the justices of another court essentially different in its character and business. Until the first of January, 1913, there was no method or plan by which the full individual record of any individual judge could be known, no plan by which any one could ascertain without long and laborious examination what any judge did in the course of a year, how many days he worked, how many cases he tried, or what happened to them when appeal was taken. There is no person having an oversight over the conduct of these judges, no one to observe their actual efficiency or to place them where their services will be most valuable. The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court is supposed, in theory, to organize and regulate this court. The whole organization and practical management of a court dealing with jurors, witnesses, and the trial of facts, in which countless thousands of people necessarily are in attendance annually under this theory, are to be dealt with by an overworked appeal court to whose business all these matters are entirely foreign. The trial judges of New York County, either singly or collectively, cannot remove even a stenographer from their own courts,

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THE WORLD'S WORK

It seemed wise to the legislature to impose that power upon the Appel-
late Division. The immense amount of petty patronage which has
been thrust upon the judiciary by this Judiciary Law is almost disgust-
ing. It reeks of the petty job creator, but it is almost wholly devoid
of intelligent organization for the judiciary itself. Yet under it
the great County of New York must conduct its judicial business.

In 1912, the New York State Bar Association appointed a commit-
tee to inquire and report in the following year certain facts regarding
the work of the Supreme Court, not only in New York County but
throughout the state. These questions are simple and important
to one seeking any definite knowledge of the actual workings of that
court. Here, for example, are the questions:

First: What terms of court during the last five years have been appointed to be held by each justice of the Supreme Court?

Second: How many days during each year has each justice in fact held court?

Third: The number of contested cases tried by jury and the number of contested cases tried without a jury by each justice.

Fourth: The periods of time consumed in the trial of those criminal cases, the trials of which have occupied more than one week, and the general character of the case, the trial of which was so extended.

Fifth: The period of time which ordinarily elapses in each county
after the case is at issue before it is brought to trial, distinguishing
between cases tried with and those tried without a jury.

Sixth: The amount of appeal work done by each justice of the
Supreme Court and the department of the court in which it was done.
Seventh: The percentage of reversals in the respective judicial
departments.

These lawyers were unable to find answers to these questions.
There was no official report or reports from which this information
could be obtained. They tried to find out some matters by writing
to every county clerk and every justice of the Supreme Court. The
committee says that the information they had thus been able to
get was so fragmentary and incomplete that any tabulation which
might be prepared from the figures obtained would justly be the
subject of criticism.

This is not a special reflection upon the lack of organization of justice in New York. It is equally true of other states. We do not know enough in detail about the work done in our courts to make a comparison between those of one state and those of another. There

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is no branch of our public business receiving public money which makes so little accounting of its services as the judiciary.

In England the judicial statistics of the business of the English courts are most elaborate in their detail. Sometime we may realize that exact knowledge is as essential in passing judgment upon the courts as upon any other criticised institution, and exact knowledge as yet is conspicuously lacking.

This lack of exact knowledge is also a great cause for unjust criticism of the courts. For example, a few years ago a learned lawyer in the western part of New York set himself to collecting details as to the performance of judicial business in the New York Supreme Court. The work of obtaining facts was difficult for the reasons I have mentioned. Having obtained information from various sources, he pieced it together and on it made some decidedly severe criticisms of the justices in New York County before the State Bar Association. He gave some statistics of the judicial service of individual judges to substantiate his criticisms. Later, one of the justices who had fallen under this criticism made an equally caustic reply. He had likewise gathered statistics, from sources the lawyer had overlooked, which showed conclusively that the lawyer's criticism had been entirely unwarranted and unjust. The whole trouble was due to a lack of adequate available facts. The lawyer's error was an honest one.

Outside New York City, the chaotic condition of the Supreme Court is even more apparent. What, in detail, the Supreme Court judges' do in the country districts, what cases they try, what time they spend on their judicial duties, what their personal effectiveness as judicial officers may be, are almost entirely matters of conjecture. That which is true of the Supreme Court likewise is true of the County Courts. County government in New York is very much in need of reorganization, and the County Courts on their judicial and administrative sides are parts of an exceedingly bad system.

There are many phases of English law which are entirely foreign to us and will, for our good, forever remain so, but as an administrative system the English courts are far ahead of us. The Lord Chancellor is the head of the judicial organization, and has the power of appointment of judges in the Chancery Division, in the King's Bench Division, and in the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division. The departments or divisions which are created by English law in turn have their responsible administrative heads. The Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division is presided over by a president. The Chief Justice is the head of the King's Bench Division; the Lord Chancellor himself is

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