alive to the necessity36 and have administered appropriate discipline to an extent unequalled elsewhere. Nevertheless, the burden of investigation has been undertaken by bar associations at great expense; and if it were not for the voluntary activities of the association the work would remain undone. This method necessitates a double investigation of the same facts, once the voluntay investigation undertaken by the Committee on Grievances of the Association, and then the formal investigation before an official referee, leading to unnecessary delay, duplication of expense, and the exhaustion of the patience of witnesses and complainants.

JUSTICES OF THE PEACE

Section 12 providing for justices of the peace commits what seems to me to be a grave error in Constitution drafting, in that it measures the jurisdiction of judicial institutions by undefined existing conditions. A Constitution should define the limitations which it imposes and not leave it to casual and perhaps faulty examination to determine the conditions which it prescribes as a measure. Such conditions always become more indefinite as they recede in point of time, and some of the greatest pitfalls of constitutional limitation are to be found in such indefinite reference.

JUDICIAL STATISTICS

The article (Sec. 13) contains a wise provision for the collation and publication of judicial statistics. An adequate knowledge of judicial administrative requirements must be dependent upon systematic judicial statistics. The statistics of England, and of some scattered courts in this country, such as the Municipal Court of Chicago, the City Magistrates' Court of New York City and the County Court of Alleghany County, Pennsylvania, are not only publicly instructive, but they reflect and in a large measure make possible the efficiency of those courts. The people have a right to know and they ought to know the relative activity of their courts; judicial statistics keep them apprised of efficiency and need. Only one who has studied such statistics can grasp the surprising light which they throw upon the judicial establishment in its relation to civic life, the increase of litigation with growth of population, the relation of

36 "Disbarment in New York" by Charles A. Boston, New York State Bar Association Reports, Vol. XXXVI, p. 467.

litigation to periods of prosperity and financial depression, the relation of particular civic conditions to classes of litigation, the relative efficiency of different courts and judges, the necessity for more judges in particular places or for particular matters. All of them are quickly reflected and indicated by properly compiled judicial statistics. All of these factors are graphically illustrated in the English judicial statistics periodically compiled and published by the King's Remembrancer, and in the City of New York similar work is done under the auspices of the appellate division in the first department without the requirement of law, upon a plan devised by a committee of judges with the aid of qualified expert accountants as well as the clerks of the courts. A systematic rather than a sporadic collection and publication of judicial statistics would prove of value to both people and courts.

UNCONTESTED PROBATE MATTERS

The proof of uncontested wills and the issue of uncontested letters testamentary and letters of administration or guardianship are often regarded as an administrative and not as a judicial function. It is not inherently a judicial function any more than the recording of deeds duly acknowledged or the filing of chattel mortgages. It creates a prima facie right; in practice, even though done through a court, it is a ministerial labor. I should recommend some specific provision in the Constitution to preserve such uncontested matters. as administrative functions of a local office readily accessible. But I am advised that the proposed article will not interfere with the establishment of such offices either under the auspices of the Masters or the inferior judiciary.

Finally, I commend to the favorable consideration of the readers whom The Annals will reach, the proposed Judiciary Article, to the end that the reformation in the direction of simplicity, flexibility, efficiency and economy, which it recommends, may be attained.

THE LAYMAN'S DEMAND FOR IMPROVED JUDICIAL

MACHINERY1

BY WILLIAM L. RANSOM,

Former Justice of the City Court of the City of New York; Chief Counsel of the New York State Public Service Commission for the First District.

Some day before long, laymen will demand that lawyers and judges organize the courts and systems of legal procedure for the better administration of justice. Before that day comes, men in general will have learned a great deal more than they know now as to ways and means of making democratic instrumentalities yield results and as to brushing aside individuals or classes who seem to stand in the way of such a consummation. No matter how brief or how protracted is the participation of the United States in the war against Germany; no matter whether American energies and resources have been taxed to the uttermost before the dawn of peace sends the wonderfully organized military, industrial and civic forces of Europe back to take up again the threads of a transformed industrial life, the admonitions of the European experience and the reconstructive impulses of the present period of preparation in this country are certain to combine to bring marked changes in the integration, coördination, and general organization of public affairs and commercial management in the United States. The sort of thing which has been done in many departments of governmental activity, under the pressure of wartime necessity and as a measure of organization for national self-preservation, will be carried on and extended by men who believe that if such things can be done for public benefit in time of war, similar things can be done for public benefit in time of peace. No one can read English newspapers and periodicals during the past year without a realization that in the reorganization of industry, the "speeding up" and "tuning up" of public administration, and the development of an altered attitude on the part of the general public towards essentially public concerns, the last two years of the war, have been more eventful, more fruitful,

1 Portions of this article have appeared in the course of a series of articles recently contributed to The Cornell Law Quarterly.

and more far-reaching than any other two hundred years of AngloSaxon history. England and France will not soon return to slipshod, unsuited methods of mismanaging public or private concerns, and all the world will feel the consequences of what has taken place, irrespective of whether a particular nation is or is not impelled to similar action by similar necessities.

THE DEMAND FOR IMPROVED JUDICIAL MACHINERY

The ending of the need for better organization for war is bound to bring, in the United States and elsewhere, emphasis on the need for better organization for the tasks of peace. Old formulas and methods will be squarely challenged and unhesitatingly discarded, if found at variance with the recent experience. The ten years following the close of the world war are almost certain to be years of iconoclasm, of smashing of idols and breaking down of long established institutions; of predisposition to change and restless searching for methods which minister more directly and unmistakably to newly manifest needs. Institutions which are to survive will have to be put in order to meet the challenge and endure the test; members of the bar will, in particular, as is traditionally true in all periods of flux and readjustment, be confronted with an especial responsibility, twofold in its aspect: a responsibility for an open-minded readiness to work out needed changes in a timely, sound, constructive way, and a responsibility for leadership in resisting mere denunciation and demand for mere change for its own sake, whether for better or for worse.

We have been talking and writing about judicial reform in the United States for a good many years, and have been making considerable headway, more than is readily recognized even by the bar, and far more than is ever recognized by the ready lay critic of courts and legal institutions. At the same time I have not the slightest doubt that the severest test of, and onslaught upon, the American system of administering justice according to law is still ahead; and changes are coming within the next twenty years far more drastic and thorough-going than have thus far taken place, from the time our Constitution was set up and the English common law appropriated from across the seas. I do not think the assault will be made upon the spirit or substance of our laws, or upon the ultimate responsiveness of the courts and legal doctrine to the changed social

standards of the people; I think our Constitution and our common law, supplemented by statute, will continue susceptible of constructive and progressive adaptation, as Mr. Justice Moody said, "to the infinite variety of the changing conditions of our national life." The difficulty is coming as to the mechanics of our judicial system, the suitability of present-day legal procedure as a modern device for the accomplishment of a basic end, the administration of prompt, impartial justice under law. The economic and social readjustments following in the wake of the war are bound to give new force to the demand for more suitable organization and more direct administrative expedients in the judicial branch of government. Already the iconoclastic voice of the lay critic is being heard along lines wellfounded only in part. For example, an excellent article in a recent issue of the widely circulated Saturday Evening Post, dealing with the readjustments which war-time conditions are likely to bring, concluded as follows:

The thing which refuses to change the one bulwark of our civilization which declines to conform itself to modern needs and modern conditions and modern transformations—is the method of administering and interpreting the civil and the criminal laws. The surgeon who dared practice his profession by the ethics and the standards of a hundred years ago, or even of fifty years ago, would be prosecuted, most likely, for malpractice; the business man who endeavored to carry on his business as his grandfather before him had carried it on would go briskly into bankruptcy; the editor who ran his newspaper the way they ran newspapers when Horace Greeley and George D. Prentice were alive woudn't run it any longer than it took for the sheriff to catch up with him; but the lawyer hobbles along in his rusty shackles, clanking the leg-irons of ancient precedent, and violently opposing the introduction of labor-saving, time-conserving improvements into his trade, because such steps would distress Coke, and possibly give pain to Littleton, and mayhap cause Blackstone peevishly to toss about beneath his tombstone. Counsel for the other side still may browbeat the citizen on the witness stand as though the latter were a malefactor at the bar, doing it with the full approval of His Honor upon the bench, not because there is any fairness in it, but because such always has been the rule in courts of law. Because of a steadfast devotion, among the lawyers and the judges, to traditions and to texts and to precepts which in other callings would have been outgrown and cast aside years and years ago, litigation means vexation and justice stands blindfolded with procrastination on her one hand and delay on her other. A misplaced comma in the indictment invalidates the just conviction of the criminal and saves him from the punishment he merits. The mote is more important to be plucked away than the beam, and those august gentlemen in silken robes, sitting in the high places of the high temple, gag at the gnat and swallow the camel without visible strain. That bumpy, torpid appearance, so often observed, is the result of having swal