Courts -- United States; Trial practice -- United States
The next important change arrived in a curious manner under the cry
for what was then known as Social Justice--a vague term which was then
advocated by many so-called "reformers" and ignorantly opposed by the
capitalist class, without any very clear understanding of what was
meant. So little was realized of the economic and efficiency values of
insurance against chance, that the beginning of the movement was
opposed. The movement resulted in certain obvious changes which
looking back upon them seemed inevitable and natural. This was what
was known as universal Employers' Liability laws. The principle soon
extending itself to all classes of accidents, resulted in the passage
of legislation which had been foreshadowed by the tremendous growth of
Casualty and Accident Insurance companies. Beginning at first with
laws holding the employer liable for accident, and afterward resulting
in the insurance of labor, it was gradually extended to accidents of
every nature, including injury from travel on common carriers and the
ordinary vicissitudes of life.
The result of State insurance against negligence and injuries of every
kind was that all claims for injuries were adjusted by the State and
the lawyers who lived by pursuing the neglect or misfortunes of
others, gradually became extinct. A certain distinguished and
conspicuous type was known by the term "ambulance chasers"--the exact
derivation of the term not being now, in 1947, entirely clear but
probably being related to some antiquated legal custom of succoring
the wounded--very soon disappeared.
The cases that arose from all commercial disputes became less numerous
as the more candid and intelligent dealings of the economic world
awoke better and more honest business standards. But long before the
disappearance of what was known as the commercial lawyer, there are
evidences that the former courts of law, even before their entire
abandonment, had fallen into a partial desuetude. Apparently disputes
of large magnitude never reached the courts. And the legal standards
enunciated by the courts were so entirely unrelated to the standards
on which the actual commerce of the world was conducted, that resort
was but little had to the arbitrament of the law of procedure in
court.
The entire change of personal and domestic relations and the greater
freedom from the institutionalism of semi-civilized communities,
_e.g._, the abandonment of all restriction on divorce, naturally did
away with the class of litigation that appeared in certain courts of
law dealing with marital or personal grievances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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