The American JudiciaryBaldwin, Simeon E. (Simeon Eben)
History
The American Judiciary
Baldwin, Simeon E. (Simeon Eben)
Courts -- United States; Law -- United States -- History
A cause of delay formerly existed in several States which arose
from the method of computing the costs taxable against the losing
party. They included, by statute, a certain sum, say twenty-five
or thirty-three cents a day for each day's attendance at court by
the prevailing party. This was construed to mean each day during
which the action lay in court, since upon any of them it might by
possibility be called up, and the client was always represented
by his attorney of record, a notice to whom was a notice to him.
Christian Roselius, one of the leaders of the New Orleans bar in
the nineteenth century, once said that he had spent a fourth of
his life in the court house waiting for his cases to be called.
The lawyers, as the duty of attendance fell on them, generally
considered this allowance as their perquisite. An attorney with
a large docket received, therefore, a number of dollars for every
day the court sat, and the longer the term lasted or the more
terms to which a cause was carried over, the larger was his gain
if his client ultimately obtained judgment, and the defendant was
of financial responsibility. This system was not universally
discontinued until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
A few States, by statute or constitutional provision, set a
certain time within which a decision must be rendered after the
trial. California gives ninety days; Idaho (Const., Art. V.,
Sec. 17) thirty. A sanction for the law sometimes provided is
that the judge cannot draw his salary until he has made oath that
he is in no default.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXV
THE ATTITUDE OF THE PEOPLE TOWARD THE JUDICIARY
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