THE ALBANY LAW JOURNAL: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE LAW AND THE LAWYERS. The Albany Albany Law Journal. MR. ALBANY, JULY 2, 1881. CURRENT TOPICS. [R. JOHN C. DODGE, in the July Atlantic Magazine, writes nine pages on Trial by Jury in Civil Suits, without saying any thing new but the following: "Few persons will be found to deny that we are more sure of justice according to law without juries than with them." He could not have looked beyond the nib of his pen for that remark. He also tells us "there is in the community a widespread distrust of the trial by jury." He quotes as authorities for this assertion the following: Bramwell, on examination before the Law Courts Commission (Scotland), said: 'If I wanted nothing but the truth in a particular case, I should prefer the verdict of a judge, and it seems to me impossible to doubt he is the preferable tribunal. "Baron * * ** In an action against a railway company, they (juries) * * this country, unlike Scotland, there are more people Speaking of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the little meditation, at least by those who have studied the 'me' and the 'not me' of the metaphysicians, or even the all A. is B. of the logicians, will make the soundness of this chapter plainer than the use of it. The word 'party,' by the way, in the manner here used is a vulgarism which none but a student or Mr. Guppy should be guilty of. One cannot be a party without being a party to something a contract a suit. To say that a party did an act or may do an act means a number of persons acting together. If it is intended of one person it is not the word unless it is used of his co-relation with others. "The party about to be injured' cannot mean a party to the crime or the attempt. It should be, 'the person about to be injured.' This is sheer hypercriticism. The gist of the enactment is simply this: persons other than those about to be injured may lawfully resist the commission of a crime. This is certainly not an axiom, and needs an enactment. In regard to "party" or "person," a person engaged in a transaction which is the subject of legal inquiry may properly be said to be a "party to it. The writer is the victim of his "metaphysics." And by the way, "co-relation with others" is tautological. One cannot have "co-relations" with himself. The Penal Code is weather-bound in the Senate. Having passed both Houses once, and the Assembly three times, and having on the last occasion passed the Assembly by an overwhelming majority, it now lies on the Senate table by a vote of twelve to twelve. Thus while our practice, both civil and criminal, is codified, our principles, both civil and criminal, are in nubibus. While there is without doubt a considerable party opposed to the codification of our civil law, we have heard little opposition to the Penal Code, either as a scheme or in respect to its execution. The objections are wholly of detail and of the most trifling description. far as we know, the profession and the public would be glad to have it enacted. It is proposed to go into effect next May, and this lapse of time would afford ample opportunity for amendment, if it should need any. We hope the Senate will not lose sight of this vitally important measure in the smoke of ephemeral party strife. So Vacation is at hand, and the lawyers "should not make things unnecessarily long," as the English judge told the lawyer who talked about nolle prosequi, with the accent on the second syllable. In Gaines v. Lizardi, 3 Woods, 77, counsel "argued seventeen days." Judges also need a word of caution on this point. The Southern Law Review for me-July, in a notice of 102 U. S. Reports, says: "After perusing twenty-six solid pages of a concurring opinion by Justice Clifford, in Railroad Company v. National Bank (Justice Harlan, at the close of eleven pages of the opinion of the court, had added, 'Further elaboration would seem unnecessary '), and the ten pages of the opinion by him in Parks v. Booth, which constitute his contribution to this volume, a half-guilty sense of satisfaction steals over the reader as he appreciates that these are the last of those famously elaborate disquisitions by which that learned judge has so often, during more than twenty-two years, exhausted at once the law of the case and the strength and patience of the readers.' It would be hard to find livelier reading for a lawyer than two articles in the July Atlantic on the "Ladies' Deposit” fund, lately blown up in Boston. One is by "Gail Hamilton" (Miss Dodge), entitled The Gentlemen's Contribution to the Ladies' Deposit; the other by Henry A. Clapp, entitled Sympathetic Banking. The fraud consisted in borrowing money from women and pretending to pay eight per cent a month for it. Some Quaker philanthropist furnished the money! It was at length exposed by the Boston Advertiser newspaper, and the female principal was recently sent to prison. Miss Dodge was one of the victims, and of the most unreasoning champions. Her present article is a shrill feminine shriek, to the effect that the men would have been swindled just the same, and that the Advertiser is very much to blame for not having exposed it sooner. The result, she says, "does show that men, so far as the Ladies' Deposit has tested them, are untrustworthy as reporters of facts or reasoners on facts, that they have either not culture enough to tell a straight or not conscience enough to tell a true story, and that they are utterly incompetent to be intrusted with the educational interests of children or with the financial interests of women." Perhaps; but are the women, Gail Hamilton being the example, likely to prove any better? Mr. Clapp's article is intensely interesting to a lawyer, and is exquisitely humorous. Of Miss Dodge he justly says: "But the extreme rage even of a clever woman will not enable her to write a sensible letter on a difficult subject of which she has no knowledge. Afterward, in the Boston Journal, Miss Dodge hedged a good deal - so much so, indeed, that her last utterances were darker than Delphic oracles. In the light of subsequent events her public attitude has an intensely comic look.” He then depicts her as sitting in a pasture, clothed in red, and being threatened from behind by a furious cow. A bystander warns her of the danger, and she accuses him of want of charity for cows, and exclaims: Are Poor, spiteful man, look to your own sex. the bulls all peaceful and harmless? Answer me that." The result is that she finds herself in the 66 predicament of the other maiden in the nursery rhyme of Jack's house. |