The Minnesotians Complain That It Is An
Interference With Popular Sovereignty.
It is possible the legislature
might have gone to an extreme in creating places for holding courts;
and I suppose the judges were kept on the march a good deal of the
time.
It also looks as if the remedy by congress was extreme. The
people say it is a coercive measure to drive them into a state
organization.
The administration of justice is secured by a system which is now
common to all the territories, with the exception of Kansas. The
supreme court consists of the three district judges in full bench.
They hold nisi prius terms in their respective districts, which are
called district courts. The judges have a salary of $2000 each, and
are appointed for a term of four years, subject to removal by the
President. The district courts have chancery jurisdiction in matters
where there is not a plain, adequate, and complete remedy at law.
(Stat. of Min. ch. 94, sec. 1.) There are also probate courts. Each
county has two justices of the peace, who are elected by the people.
And I cannot but remark how much better the practice is to elect or
appoint a few justices of the peace rather than to allow the office to
be degraded by wholesale appointments, as a matter of compliment,
according to the usage too common in some Eastern States. The justices
of the peace have jurisdiction in civil cases where the amount in
question does not exceed $100; and when the amount at issue is over
$20 either party may demand a jury of six men to try the case. But
there would be little demand for juries if all magistrates were as
competent as our enlightened friend Judge Russell.
Special pleading never flourished much in the West. It was never "a
favorite with the court" out this way; while the regard which the
lawyers have cherished for it has been "distant and respectful." It
has been laid on the shelf about as effectually as bleeding in the
practice of medicine. The science of special pleading, as it is known
in these days and that in some of the older states exists in a
mitigated form from what it did in the days of Coke and Hale. The
opportunities to amend, and the various barriers against admitting a
multiplicity of pleas, have rendered the system so much more rational
than it once was, that it is doubtful if some of the old English
worthies could now identify it. Once a defendant could plead to an
action of assumpsit just as many defences as he chose; first, he could
deny the whole by pleading the general issue; then he could plead the
statute of limitations, infancy, accord and satisfaction, and a dozen
other pleas, by which the plaintiff would be deprived of any clue to
the real defence. I suppose it was this practice of formal lying which
has given rise to the popular error that a lawyer is in the habit of
lying, or is obliged to lie, in his arguments.
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