upon the appellate division of the Supreme Court for rules-in other words, the Appeal Court makes the rules for the Trial Court. Instead of the Supreme Court judges being relieved, as the English judges are, by having procedural matters handled by masters, the Supreme Court judges must pass upon between sixty and seventy thousand motions, applications for orders and the like annually. They must daily spend half an hour at least of judicial time calling calendars, passing upon excuses for unreadiness and the like. Each justice is expected to hold court as though no other branch of the court existed. The result is, for example, that far more jurors are summoned to the parts trying jury cases than can possibly be used, all of which would be unnecessary if jurors were called not to one of these parts but to the Supreme Court itself and parcelled out to the various parts of the courts as needed. These Supreme Court judges rotate; they try equity cases one month, negligence cases another, contract cases another, with an occasional transfer to the trial of criminal causes or to duty as appeal judges in the appellate term. There is no specialization of function and no attempt at making experts in chosen branches of the law.

When one considers the organization of our local courts, which I have only partially and roughly outlined, the necessity for reorganization becomes obvious. We need a judicial system. We have over-developed the notion of judicial independence. We need to supplement it by the creation of a responsibility, of the judge to an organization, of which as an individual he forms a part. Back of the recall of judges, there remains a crudely expressed idea-the creation of an external responsibility to the people as a whole because there is lacking an internal responsibility, that of the judges to a judicial organization capable of effectively directing and disciplining them.

With all the reforms which have been made and which are in contemplation over matters of procedure and the like, we shall never have a fully efficient judiciary in the metropolitan district of New York until we have a unified system of courts of broad original jurisdiction, with branches to meet the convenience of litigants, unless we have for that court a responsible head, not only of its judicial but of its administrative work as well, with adequate power to assign justices to their work in accordance with their capacities and special fitness, with authority to discipline and direct clerks

and employes and to determine what employes the judicial system requires and where their services are wanted. This court must not be bound hand and foot by the present complicated Code of Civil Procedure. It should have power to make necessary rules, having the effect of law on matters of practice. This court should have power to appoint masters, with functions corresponding largely to those busily engaged today in the English courts of justice, who can consider practice applications and motions which today require an entirely unnecessary amount of time from lawyers and judges, pass accounts and make such investigations as the court may direct.

Until we have made clear to the public the necessity for these structural reforms and until with the aid of an enlightened public opinion we have modernized the organization of our courts, we shall not have attained, in full measure, an effective method of administering justice, or have made any appreciable reduction in the cost of litigation, or in the cost to the taxpayer of the judicial system.

LOOKING FORWARD IN THE LAW

BY ANDREW YOUNGER WOOD,

Managing Editor, The Recorder, San Francisco, Cal.

The dearest desire of man and the greatest necessity of society is justice; that will be conceded, even by the unthinking. The means by which that justice has been obtained have, however, been a cause for criticism from immemorial times.

The thought of statesmen, the labor of jurists, the activities of lawyers and the hopes of litigants have been directed toward the solution of this great problem. How shall speedy justice be achieved? How shall men, under the law, best secure the rights guaranteed them by that law? The question is age old and is still unanswered, save in the striving of those who look toward the light and see visions of a day when social and economic justice shall prevail. Yet with all of the effort that has been made, little of real progress has been accomplished. Litigation drags and justice is delayed and thereby denied.

It is customary to criticize the lawyers for this condition, but as a matter of fact the most persistent advocates of simplified procedure are the lawyers. They, of all others, realize the hardships that litigants, and particularly poor litigants, suffer by reason of delay and have, therefore, bent their efforts to seeking not only relief but a remedy.

It is more difficult to persuade a legislator that procedural reforms or changes in the judicial system advocated by lawyers are desirable than it would be physically to put a camel through the eye of a needle. Yet practically all of the social and economic reforms in California in the past eight years were conceived, advocated and adopted by lawyers and with their active support and assistance. While lawyers have not hesitated to radically change social and economic laws, they have been content, as a rule, with endeavoring to adapt present machinery to the advancing needs of the times. Yet their outlook has been forward as the facts will show.

This condition is not peculiar to California but is general throughout the country. Everywhere the tendency is toward

expedition in litigation and a higher realization of the lawyer's obligation of service, and there is every reason to believe that the development will be in the direction of more radical reforms, not only in procedure, but in the machinery of judicial organization.

I. EFFORTS TOWARD PROCEDURAL REFORM AND JUDICIAL REORGANIZATION

In California the principal factors in the movement for procedural reform have been the state and local bar associations, particularly those of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and the Commonwealth Club of California, an organization for the study and discussion of civic problems, located at San Francisco.

These organizations made the first definite concerted effort for procedural reform, one of the most important accomplishments being an amendment to the Constitution providing that:

No judgment shall be set aside, or new trial granted, in any case, on the ground of misdirection of the jury, or of the improper admission or rejection of evidence, or for any error as to any matter of pleading, or for any error as to any matter of procedure unless, after an examination of the entire cause, including the evidence, the court shall be of the opinion that the error complained of has resulted in a miscarriage of justice.1

Many drastic reforms have been advocated, among which were the abolition of the demurrer and the motion to strike out, it being declared that such matters were usually injected for purposes of delay and could very well be discarded. The outcry from the legal profession against such a drastic change in the procedure was enough to turn a none-too-friendly legislature against the proposals and they were not accorded a hearing. It is only just to state that so many politico-social questions requiring new and drastic legislation were pending at the session referred to (1911) that few matters not programmed were considered.

The California Bar Association has been a strong factor in the movement for procedural reform and has succeeded in a measure in having some of its measures enacted into laws. It has succeeded in simplifying the practice as to new trial and appeal and has labored diligently, but frequently without success, because of the indifference and ignorance of successive legislatures as to the desirability of the reforms proposed. The results, however, so far as the 'Constitution of California, Sec. 4, Art. VI.

elimination of delay, the expedition of business and the relief of congestion was concerned have not come up to expectations, particularly in the latter instance, where litigation has multiplied faster than facilities have been provided for handling it.

One of the most important movements for the simplification of practice was inaugurated by the California Bar Association in 1915 through the creation of a Special Section to report on the advisability of governing procedure by flexible rules of court instead of by rigid statutory enactments.

This committee, of which R. S. Gray of the San Francisco Bar was chairman, and Walter Perry Johnson, Percy V. Long and Garrett W. McEnerney of San Francisco, and Judge Lewis R. Works and Joseph P. Loeb of Los Angeles, composed the personnel, made an exhaustive study of the entire question and presented a comprehensive report, recommending that the making of procedural rules be transferred from the legislature to the Supreme Court.

Professor Roscoe Pound, Dean of the Harvard University Law School, came to California, and at the Monterey Convention of the California Bar Association, in 1916, gave a scholarly and logical exposition of the entire subject of the government by the courts of the procedure in matters before them. The convention after elaborate discussion endorsed the plan in principle.

The legislative extra session of 19162 had requested suggestions from the justices of the Supreme Court and district courts of appeal, from the judges of the superior courts, and from the state and local bar associations as to changes "necessary to prevent delay incident to litigation in this state." Acting upon this invitation the California Bar Association recommended the appointment of a joint committee of legislators and lawyers to consider measures "for the relief of the courts." Such a committee was created,3 made up of the chairmen and members of the Senate and Assembly judiciary committees and certain prominent members of the bar, men of large business, ability and experience, and thoroughly representative of the profession.

The joint committee, or rather the lawyer members, met during the legislative recess and devoted a week to the discussion of twelve suggestions that crystallized out of a day's argument. These A. C. R. 2, Stats. 1916, p. 50.

3S. C. R. 11, Stats. 1917, Chap. 14.