The earthquake, we may hope, will also shake up the justices of the peace, who in any self-respecting organization of the courts will either disappear or be linked up, as the American Judicature Society proposes, in a county system, with the county judge in control. The justices are now associated with the town or a corresponding division of the county and deal with very minor (but not for that reason insignificant) civil and criminal cases, or act as a tribunal for preliminary hearings and commitments. In cities the office has steadily and hopelessly decayed by transfer of its jurisdiction to other courts and through the abuses of the fee system. It was established moreover when means of transportation were few and difficult and districts consequently had to be made small in order to meet the convenience of the litigants who came seeking justice. But times have changed! Circumstances favor larger districts and infinitely better control over this branch of the judiciary. In making over the courts we cannot properly overlook the machinery for enforcing judicial decisions. This is the function of the sheriff. Where, in the reconstructed scheme of things shall he come in? Our forefathers committed themselves to the theory of the separation of powers, these three: the legislative, the executive and the judicial. Under this scheme of things the duty of judges is to find or interpret the law: nothing more. The sheriff as an executive officer is therefore always independent of the court: he is the enforcer of state laws which come to him in the form of very specific instructions by way of court decisions. Such instructions are issued in the interest of parties to a legal controversy. But the sheriff is not the only law enforcer in the county. The state has made the board of supervisors (or board of commissioners) and county officers its agents in enforcing various state laws. And so the question arises: why not bring all the enforcing agencies under a single control? Two ways suggest themselves. If the judicial system is to be a unified state affair, then judicial-decision enforcing should also be a state concern and the county should keep its hands off. In practice this would mean that the governor or some other general state officer should appoint the sheriffs on the same principle which is employed in the federal government, wherein the President appoints U. S. marshals. But, if on the other hand, the county government is to be considered as a general local agency of the state for enforcing all its laws, then nothing remains but to put it up to the local governing body or some local chief executive to select the sheriff. Such is the method which has been applied in the city and county of Denver, Colorado, where the mayor is the chief executive of the consolidated governments.