The Weekly Comet

THE SUPREME COURT.

In the columns of the Crescent, we find an article in reference to the Supreme Court, in which very good suggestions occur, that meet with our full concurrence and approbation. Anything tending to abbreviate the laws, to abolish senseless forms, and learned opinions, and come more speedily to plain unadorned simple equity, may receive aid from us at any time, and under any form of circumstances.

We see no reason why books of mere opinions should be given the world—no reason why law should not be shorn of its senseless latin bombasts, and meaningless verbosity—no reason why in an age of railroads and telegraphs, a man should wait until his coffin is made, for the decision of a simple case, made incomprehensible by the forms, fees, and services of the law.

Does additional books throw additional light on the subject? Are the rights of individuals more clearly understood now, than they were five centuries ago? Not a bit of it; and it is a disgrace to the intelligence of the age, that so many family cases like "Jarndyce and Jarndyce," stain our Court Docket.

Let us give the summing up of the article referred to in the Crescent.—The writer says:

"There are more treatises or essays upon law than decisions upon the rights of the parties before them. They are too reasoned—there are too much of them. Litigants do not care about having their rights or their wrongs speculated about in a judicial opinion. All they want is to have their cases decided. They want justice done between them—not technical distinctions spread out over a dozen pages of closely written fools-cap. And to the bar the practice is time wasting and unprofitable.

If the jurisprudence of the State were in its infancy; if our legislation were badly defined, general and perplexing; If there were none but young members of the bar to listen to them: if we had no reports—nothing to guide us over the sea of litigation, this interminable reasoning might be well enough. But inasmuch as our legislation is, comparatively speaking, plain enough; inasmuch as our bar is composed of the oldest and very best material—of men who have made reputations before some of the present justices had been admitted to practice; and inasmuch as Martin, Mathews, Porter, Bullard, Eustice and others, have sat as members of the same tribunal, and, with their powerful minds, formed a jurisprudence which is admired and quoted by the whole country as evidence of the law, we do not think we can be charged with disrespect to the present incumbents, when we echo the wish which we have often heard expressed: that they would adopt the brevity of style of the jurists we have named, as well as their opinions; and, sparing the time from their compositions, apply it to the examination of the records which have been submitted them."