ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

between litigants. So far as the litigant is concerned, one appeal is all that he should be entitled to. The community at large is not interested in his having more than one. The function of the court of last resort should not primarily be for the purpose of securing a second review or appeal to the particular litigants whose case is carried to that court. It is true that the court can only act in concrete cases between par ticular litigants, and so incidentally it does furnish another review to the litigants, in. that case; but the real reason for grant ing the review should be to enable the Supreme Court to lay down general prin ciples of law for the benefit and guidance of the community at large. Therefore, the appellate jurisdiction of the court of last resort should be limited to those cases which are typical and which give to it in its judgment an opportunity to cover the whole field of the law. This may be done by limiting the cases within its cognizance to those involving a large sum of money, or to the construction of the Constitution of the United States, or the States, or their statutes. The great body of the litigation which it is important to dispose of, to end the particular controversies, should be con fined to the courts of first instance and the intermediate appellate courts. It is better that the cases be all decided promptly, even if a few are wrongly decided. In our supreme courts the business is disposed of with perhaps as great prompt ness as is consistent with the purpose of their jurisdiction. The criticism that courts of last resort are too much given to techni cality has, I believe, some merit in it. Codes might be drawn, however, giving the courts of review more discretion in this matter than they now have by requiring the party complaining of an error in the trial court to show affirmatively that the result would have been different if the error had not been committed. The difference in importance between an error in the hurlyburly of the actual trial and in the calm of

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a court of review under the urgent argument of counsel for plaintiff in error and the microscopic vision of an analytical but technical mind on the supreme bench is very great. The complaints that the courts are made for the rich and not for the poor have no foundation in fact in the attitude of the courts upon the merits of any controversy which may come before them, for the judges of this country are as free from prejudice in this respect as it is possible to be. But the inevitable effect of the delays incident to the machinery now required in the settlement of controversies in judicial tribunals is to oppress and put at a disadvantage the poor litigant and give great advantage to his wealthy opponent. I do not mean to say that it is possible, humanly speaking, to put them on an exact equality in regard to litigation; but it is certainly possible to reduce greatly the disadvantage under which the man of little means labors in vindicating or defending his rights in court under the existing system, and courts and legislatures could devote themselves to no higher purpose than the elimination from the present system of those of its provisions which tend to prolong the time in which judicial controversies are disposed of. The shortening of the time will reduce the expense because, first, the fees of the lawyers must be less if the time taken is not so great; second, the incidental court fees and costs would be less. Again, I believe that a great reform might be effected, certainly in the federal courts, and I think too in the state courts, by a mandatory reduction of the court costs and fees. In the interest of public economy we have generally adopted a fee system by which the officers of the courts are paid. Human nature has operated as it might have been expected to operate, and the court officers, the clerk and the marshal, have not failed, especially in the federal courts, to make the litigation as expensive as possible, with a view to making certain the