PART II. ADDRESSES DELIVERED BEFORE THE ILLINOIS STATE BAR CHICAGO, JULY 14 AND 15, 1896. ANNUAL ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ILLINOIS STATE BAR ASSOCIATION, AT CHICAGO, JULY 14, 1896. JOHN H. HAMLINE, PRESIDENT. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Illinois State Bar Association: The by-laws of our association require the president to deliver an annual address, "embodying therein such reference to recent changes in the law of this State, its present state and administration, with his recommendations in respect thereto, as shall seem best calculated to conserve the general weal." As the legislature has not been in session since you did me the honor to elect me as your president, I cannot report to you with reference to any changes in the law made since my distinguished predecessor retired from office. However, in looking over the recommendations made in his address, I am struck by a statement which, coming from one of the ablest of our Appellate Court judges, and one whose wide and extended experience has been for the most part acquired outside the county of Cook, is entitled to especial consideration. It is that "except in Chicago, where the trial dockets are congested to an unusual degree, the chief ground of complaint at the law's delays is of cases after leaving the trial courts." This observation coupled with the recommendation that the court sits in one place, "against which proposition" he says "I have never heard a valid argument advanced," has led me to make some inquiry as to the rate and manner in which our Supreme Court dispatches its work under the present system of roving around the State. The result thereof I present to you, not for the purpose of criticising the court, but for the purpose of calling the attention of the bar PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS. and the people to the grevious delays in securing justice, which the legislature is solely responsible for. In these later days when demagogues, secure of their party vote, break into executive office by pandering to Socialists and Anarchists, and before the public eye and ear is averted, proceed to slander the highest courts of their State, and their Nation, it ill becomes one who believes in and loves the existing institutions of his country and desires to see them perpetuated, to say one word of criticism of the judicial department. Nowhere in the land are there more laborious, learned or fair minded judges than those who compose the Supreme Court of Illinois. At no time in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States has less partisanship, more learning or greater courage been shown, than by the present members of that body. And yet, if defective laws and increased litigation cause either court to be swamped with work, it is the peculiar function of the public spirited lawyer to call the attention of his fellow citizens to that fact and suggest a plan for its relief. At the September term, 1875, of the Northern Grand Division of the Supreme Court of Illinois, the civil docket contained 734 cases, the people's docket 13 cases, and the rehearing docket 57 cases. At the September term, 1876, the civil docket contained 671 cases; the people's docket contained 12 cases and the rehearing docket 70 cases. At the September term, 1877, the civil docket contained 548 cases, of which 393 were continued from the prior term; the people's docket 9 cases and the rehearing docket 47 cases. During these years the court was overwhelmed with work; oral arguments were tabooed and every now and then the bar would be paralyzed by the court's handing down two opinions at the same term of court on the same proposition of law, one holding the law to be one way, the other holding the law to be just the reverse. The court traveled around on wheels from Mt. Vernon to Springfield, and from thence to JOHN H. HAMLINE. Ottawa, holding two terms a year in each place, and the members thereof when not on the railroad cars or hearing the actual call of cases were at their respective homes, individually wrestling with the cases assigned to them, generally without the advantage of oral argument by the bar, and frequently without knowing which side of the case the court as a whole was in favor of. The bench agreed that if an intermediate court should be created which would stop a large part of the petty appeal cases, they would then have time to make a limited call each day. Each case would be expected. to be argued orally, and the court after listening to it would, dum fervet opus, as a court consider the case, arrive at a decision and have the opinion promptly prepared and filed. This association at once put its shoulder to the wheel and procured the passage of the Appellate Court Act, which has effectuated the object of its creation so far as stopping appeals. This association also, year after year, besought the legislature to anchor the Supreme Court at some one point, that the time of the court might be saved and the members thereof given the benefit of daily consultations with their fellows; that the litigant might bring his appeal into court at once and get a prompt opinion-one which would reflect the judgment of the whole court, which both sides knew would be final, and could not be changed on rehearing. But just as often as the legislature was petitioned, just so often did the clerks of the three divisions and the hotel keepers in the three seats of the court join forces, and by a system of political terrorism over their own representatives, and log rolling with the representatives from other parts of the State, especially from counties where public institutions were located, prevent this reform from being secured. The report of the late president, as stated, suggests that this evil does not grow less. And in order that I might learn just what its present proportions were, several weeks ago I addressed letters to the clerks of the different divisions |