Procedural Law Reform

It is said that under our present practice, no matter how just the verdict and judgment of the court below may be, no lawyer can guarantee that his case may not be reversed by the Supreme Court. Is this criticism well-founded in fact; and, if so, is it a reflection upon our present methods of legal procedure? The statisticians tell us that no less than twenty per cent of all the cases taken to our appellate courts relate to questions of practice, and that throughout the country in forty per cent of these cases new trials are granted. In our own State about fifty per cent of all cases taken to our Supreme Court are reversed, and this seems to be the general average throughout the country. It would seem, therefore, that to be a weed-puller in the judicial garden, as Judge Grosscup puts it, is more potent and powerful (to continue the figure) than to be a tiller of the soil and a planter of the crops, and that the complaint as to uncertainty of results in our appellate courts has some basis in fact. But it does not follow that such a condition necessarily reflects discredit upon our present system. I am not one who believes that our system is wholly bad, as the language of some of the extreme reformers would seem to indicate, nor free from faults as many conservatives maintain. Justice has generally been done in this country; the courts of our land, aided by an intelligent and progressive bar, have, with rare exceptions, quietly, without ostentation and with the spirit of true patriotism, administered the law in such a way as to protect life and property, preserve business interests, and maintain that social equilibrium essential to our welfare and progress. Few men escape the just penalty of the law. The law naturally divides itself into two great branches: one which defines legal rights and duties, called substantive law, and the other which prescribes the means whereby these rights and duties are established and enforced, called adjective or procedural law, with its branches of pleading, practice, and evidence