fession, or else to the Bench, or to both. We read from day to day of 150 additional jurymen being summoned and less than half of them even deigning to appear. True, the delinquents are fined one hundred dollars each, but that does not remedy matters. Here among ourselves may we not ask is this not scandalous? Who is to blame for it? And they are even summoned from your so-called special panel-the pet of a few of your superiors in the profession-pardon me, I meant seniors. It is a constantly recurring thing in this county of New York for the impanelling of a jury in a criminal case to take several weeks. Some of our newspapers made much of the fact that in a recent noted criminal case in New Jersey the jury was obtained in a forenoon. They held it up in contrast to the length of time taken in this state, as they put it. But they were quite

in error.

It was no contrast to the time taken in this state, but only to the time taken in this county of New York. You have only to go over to Kings county to see a jury obtained in the most notorious criminal case in an hour or less than a forenoon. It is an exceptional thing for it to take a day. And this is the rule not only in Kings county and the other nine counties which go with it to make the second department, but all over the state, except here in New York county. In fact it takes you longer over here to impanel a jury in a civil case than it takes to impanel a jury in a criminal case in Kings county. The truth is that the evils and disorders which we have in this state in the administration of justice, and in our court practice, have all originated in this county of New York. In the rest of the state we try to prevent their spreading to us. We must also admit when we come together like this that a criminal trial which in Kings county and the rest of the state would take a day or a week to try after the jury is obtained will in New York county take five or ten times as long. Why is this? Who is to blame for it? Now you know why, and you know who is to blame, but I suppose we may leave that for another occasion. All cannot be said at once, and there are times and seasons, as the saying is. But be sure, my friends, the time and the season are coming.

It is no wonder that an intelligent man of business or even of leisure dreads to get on a jury when he knows that the trial is to be strung out to weeks or months. The junior Bar should set its face against this abuse of trial by jury. It should be careful to deserve none of the blame for it. The way jurymen are examined and tormented with questions in this county is unknown anywhere else where the jury system exists. They are treated as being dishonest and under suspicion, and then questions are put to them that could be properly put to a sharper only, and which no one but a sharper could answer. Why a defending lawyer tries to get a jury of sharpers is beyond my understanding. One would think that when he sees a good man of fair intelligence called into the box he would let him alone. But instead they proceed on the theory that he has no conscience or honor, but is a prejudiced rogue, and ask him questions which in his native honesty he hesitates and stumbles over, and out he goes on a challenge, to have his place filled by some glib sharper, who would decide the gravest matter by the toss of a coin. These are the lawyers who defend life and liberty at your bar. It is no wonder that the appellate courts reverse so many convictions. Trials so conducted and strung out to such length cannot be kept free from error. Since the time of Tweed down to the present all of the convictions in this county for official crimes have been reversed on appeal, excepting one or two cases.

Lawyers tell me that your panel of jurors in this county is very poor, and getting worse. Why should not you lawyers see that it is made better? The remedy was not to pass a law to make a so-called special panel of jurors for a few special people and their cases, but to make the general panel first class. And this could easily be done. There seem to be a few lawyers and others in your county who strangely, and contrary to our healthy notions of equality before the law and in our courts, entertain what seems to me the pernicious notion that there should be different grades of jurymen for different grades of people and their cases, civil and criminal. Instead of this we want a first-class general panel, better even than your so-called special panel, for every one and for every one's case. If it was

first class no one would have thought of passing a law for the special panel. The idea of a special panel arose wholly out of the fact that the general panel was unfit in intelligence and honesty. But, my friends, if it be unfit it is unfit for every one, and it should be made fit instead of rigging up a special panel for a few people. And it could not be at all difficult to make the general panel fit and even better than this so-called special panel. There is plenty of the very best material in intelligence, business experience and honesty. We have in Kings county more than 200,000 voters, and use only about 9,000 jurymen in a year for our seven jury parts. A general panel of less than 15,000 is ample. There is no reason why this panel should not be first class with more than 200,000 men to make it up from. In New York county you have more than 300,000 voters, and as jurors here serve for a month, instead of only a week, as in Kings county, your panel cannot need to be much larger than ours. If it is not first class it is because the officials who make it up leave off the best men for political or other considerations. You ought to see that this is stopped. I am able to tell you that if you look into it you may learn something that will surprise you. If you do not, who will? The making up of the special panel out of the general panel, as the statute of 1896 directed, made your general panel worse than ever. It lowered it in intelligence in Kings county fifty

per cent.

The idea that an ignorant and dishonest general panel is good enough for most people but not good enough for others is so obnoxious and pernicious that it is not easy to conceive that it originated in minds bred to the institutions of this country. And did it? So low did our general panel go in Kings county by the making up of the special panel out of it, that two years ago the trial judges there had a law passed putting the special panel back into the general panel, and also requiring the general panel to be scrutinized and purged of all incompetents by summoning the entire panel before the commissioner for examination under the direction of the judges. This same process was continued each year as required by the new statute. In this way when we got through we had reduced a panel

of about 46,000 down to about 16,000. All exemptions had to be claimed before the commissioner or else they were deemed waived. None can afterwards excuse. Every man on the new panel was competent and eligible. Formerly we used to draw seventy-five each week for each part of court, out of which we got an average of thirty. Now we draw only forty for each part and actually get forty for service. You gentlemen have noticed the difference in our juries in Kings county, but I suppose it is news to most of you how it was brought about. If I were to tell you how many years we had to persist in the legislature, and the amount of work it took to get the new law passed and into operation, you could hardly credit it. And this year another statute was passed to make up a special panel again out of our general panel, and thus nearly all our work is undone. Except for this, our panel would have been made even better this year.

Why the special panel is forced on us we do not know. Neither Bench nor Bar nor public asked for it. Some little coterie here in New York county seemed to do it. Only one jury was ever drawn from the special panel in Kings county. There was great competition of jurymen to get on it, for those who got on it were practically exempted from jury service; and now we are to have that order of things again. I trust you young men will be heard from on this subject of lifting up trial by jury in this part of the state. It is worth your serious attention and, I trust, will get it. In selecting juries let me urge you to aim at getting the jury quickly and to get an intelligent jury even in damage cases.

The following is intended to be a summary of the Justice Gaynor's remarks on "Cases on Appeal and Special Term Trials." The report is not as full as we wished and the Justice is not to be charged with its accuracy. We give it because of its suggestions.

Cases on Appeal.-In the printed usually meets much waste of material.

cases on appeal one

The court and title of

the case is often on the summons, and on every other paper

as well, sometimes even on the exhibits. This is good for the printer but bad for the client. Put the court and title on summons only and omit it on the rest. The "literary fellers " who practiced law some twenty-five years back have passed away and the results show in the reckless manner in which many printed cases are now made up.

In printing your case, select that evidence which covers the points on which you appeal. Have your printed cases concise and avoid the somewhat prevalent fashion of printing all the evidence. No matter how trivial the evidence some lawyers seems unsatisfied unless they have it in their printed cases.1 Bulk is not the desideratum. Bulk does not impress the court and bulk impresses your client only until he gets the decision and the printer's bill. Save the court's time, save your own time, and save your client's money. Remember that the case that is reversed on the facts alone is rare indeed.

Special Term Trials.-That equity follows the law may be true generally, but equity procedure does not follow legal procedure. The rules governing evidence in equity are not the same as the rules governing evidence in the courts of law. Some lawyers now-a-days seem to forget because the two are combined in one system of courts that the distinctions as to the rules of evidence are not wiped out, or else they do not understand of such distinctions. They will go into special term and object and except because the rules of evidence of the law courts are not observed. Why, I heard a lawyer in special term except because the judge stated that he thought a witness was lying, and only the other day one excepted to the evidence under section 829 of the code because testimony of conversations with a deceased person was allowed by the justice sitting.

Though our courts are combined in one system, chancery is still chancery and law is still law and the careful lawyer will govern his evidence according to the court in which he happens to be working.

1 Mr. Paul Fuller, who spoke after Justice Gaynor, quoted Judge Allen on this point: "Don't prepare your printed cases by dumping the stenographer's notes into the printing office and letting the stenographer and the printer do the work of the lawyer."