A Philadelphia Lawyer in the London CourtsLeaming, Thomas
History
A Philadelphia Lawyer in the London Courts
Leaming, Thomas
Courts -- Great Britain; Lawyers -- Great Britain
Taking at random the daily Official Cause List for London there will
be found on a given day sitting at the Law Courts in the Strand
alone, twenty-one judges of the High Court, eight masters, seven
Chancery registrars, twelve masters in Chancery, three official
referees, two registrars in bankruptcy and one official presiding
over "companies winding up"--exactly fifty-four men simultaneously
performing judicial duty in one building. Each of these is holding
what is practically a separate court and his title is of no
significance. When one remembers that at the same time the House of
Lords is sitting at Westminster, the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council in Downing Street, the four Criminal Courts at the Old
Bailey, more than twenty police magistrates at Bow Street and
elsewhere, and County Courts, at Bloomsbury, Clerkenwell, Edmonton,
Marylebone, Shoreditch, Southwark and Westminster, some idea may be
formed of the number of judges and courts always at work in the
metropolis.
Innumerable courts are also sitting in the provinces, which, if less
important, serve to relieve the metropolitan judges. The justices of
the peace number in many counties three or four hundred and in one
county about eight hundred, although most of them never attend and
the work is done by comparatively few. They sit singly as committing
magistrates and in groups at petty sessions and at quarter sessions.
There are also a large number of borough criminal courts presided
over by a recorder. Besides, the county courts are over five hundred
in the aggregate, though there are not so many county judges, for
the smaller courts are grouped into circuits. Finally, there are the
Assizes of the High Court coming down periodically from London to
try causes, both criminal and civil, all over England.
Thus the little Island fairly bristles with tribunals and teems with
judges and any criticism of American judges or of American judicial
methods by such comparison would only be possible in ignorance of
the facts.
* * * * *
In America, litigation begins in the court room; in England, it ends
there. American proceedings tend to be somewhat formal,
conventional, diffuse and dilatory. Pitfalls and traps are
occasionally laid by astute practitioners, which embarrass the side
really in the right and delay a conclusion upon the merits. Much is
incomprehensible to the laymen concerned except the result.
English legal proceedings on the contrary are colloquial, flexible,
simple and prompt, thoroughly in touch with the spirit of the times
and with the ordinary man's every-day life.
The legal decisions of the two countries are probably of equal
value, and are held in mutual respect. Neither, perhaps, could claim
any superiority over the other in its legal results, but in methods,
England at present is far in advance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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