THE CIVIL COURT

In a twenty-four-story office building, on a smooth gliding elevator, up seventeen stories, down a low-ceilinged corridor, past fireproof doors labeled: "Clerk's Office," "Judge's Chambers," "Witness Room," we find the typical modern court. The old idea of a very pseudo-classic courthouse on a placid village green to which the neighboring county squires have ridden, and where the jail is in the cellar and the town recorder in the attic, is fast disappearing. The old courthouse in the city, of red sandstone with battlements and turrets, minarets, and a clock tower, seems out of date.

The white marble palaces of the higher courts wherein broad stairways, paneled mahogany, stained glass, and soft noiseless carpets giving an air of repose and refined culture, are not altogether consistent with the modern spirit. The man on the street does not understand whether the marble statues on the roof are symbols of justice or late presidents of the United States. The usual courthouse of twenty years ago was a mixture of armory and Gothic church.

In the larger courthouses where there are many terms or parts in one building, there is an air of confusion. Rotundas, corridors, stairways, and elevators are constantly filled with a moving crowd of lawyers waiting for their cases to be tried, clients who have had appointments, witnesses who have been subp[oe]naed to come to court and when they get there find it is not one court, but thirty. The latter are found wandering dazedly about asking anyone who will stop to listen if they know in which part the case of Martin vs. Martin is being tried. Lunch counters, telephone booths, and a feeling of awe are in the building.

What that terror of a court of law comes from is difficult to analyze. There is the impressive majesty of the law; always about a court is the inspiring sense of something more than human. Even an empty court-room is not as other rooms. Like an empty theater there remains an atmosphere of glamour, of mystery, and yet equally true there remains a substantial, strong odor of crowds.

It is said that every theater retains its own peculiar smell. The scientific investigation of the psychology of odors is too subtle to be understandable. The question of analyzing the exudations of a nervous crowd seems interesting, but the remembrance of an anxious humanity is always present. In former times the attendant placed a small bunch of herbs and aromatic flowers on the judge's desk, and glasses of the dried bouquets remained in a row for long periods.

Hygienically considered the courts are unsanitary. If the windows are opened the cold air is apt to draw directly on the heads of the jury and the stenographer. In summer the noise of city streets, the cars, the elevated, the cries of children, the hand-organs, the flies, are not at all conformable to the supposed dignity of the court. It is well-known that the crowded and unhealthy conditions of the courts are conducive to disease as well as discomfort to the inhabitants.

The connotations of the name court are generally impressive. There is the suggestion of jail, of punishment, of something final, of absolute judgment. Also it suggests the courtyard of a tenement house, an alleyway or something shut in and confined. The philology is from the old French cort or curt. It is curious that it means something narrow. There are the suggestions of the lists, of heralds, of trumpets, of banners and knights in armor, of prancing steeds, of fair ladies watching, of joust, tournaments, and trials by battle. There is something royal about the word. We think of pomp and magnificence and purple robes, of kings on their thrones, with courtiers standing about. The conception of Diety to the simple man who visualizes, immediately takes on the form of a court. We speak of the Courts of Heaven. The pictures of Godhead represent him as sitting in the center on his raised throne with the surrounding tiers of attendant angels.

The modern court-room is only an adapted continuation of a medieval idea. On the raised dais under an unsanitary and dusty canopy of green plush sits the judge; instead of a sceptre he holds the gavel. This gavel, by the way, is falling more and more into disuse. As a symbol of authority, a little wooden hammer has become a trifle ludicrous. If a judge were to shake it too violently there might be a fear on the part of those watching that he was about to throw it at the spectators or at one of the arguing lawyers.

The judge sits at an imposing high-railed desk with standard lights at either corner. The top of the desk is usually above the level of the eyes even of the lawyer standing. This is an arrangement which is conventional and convenient; it would not be consistent with the majesty of the law if the judge should be discovered writing a personal note or taking a glance at the stock market reports in the evening paper.

The judge's chair is ordinarily a revolving one with a dip backward. Stationary chairs are trying, for those who have to remain quiet for so many hours at a time, and the swinging back and forth and twisting about gives a little relaxation.

In front of the judge's dais are the counselors' or lawyers' tables, and at one side in front and below usually another table for reporters. It is somewhat like the arrangement in baronial halls where there was an upper and lower table and some sat below the salt and others above.

On one side, opposite, but not as high, is the jury-box. This is a pen with twelve seats within a high-sided inclosure like an old-fashioned pew. What the object of the inclosure may be is uncertain, unless it is a relic of a time when it was necessary to imprison the jurors. Jury duty has doubtless always been arduous and disagreeable, and in earlier days men were probably as anxious to escape serving on the jury as they are to-day. In one of the courts, which was not supposed to be for jury trials, twelve men once sat on a case without any jury-box in plain chairs and at the side of the room. They were extremely uncomfortable themselves; their legs were exposed and they seemed shockingly unconventional.

Between the judge's desk and the jury-box is the witness chair, an ordinary chair placed not quite so high, but beside the judge's and where he can look down on the witness. The position of the witness chair may be accountable for the feeling of protecting the witness that exists in the minds of the judge and jury. There is a natural sympathy for him, as though he were being attacked by the examining counsel. The witness in former times stood in a little enclosed box and in Italy, where court scenes are more intense, the prisoners to this day in criminal trials testify from behind iron bars.

Below the witness chair is the stenographer. The former idea of the aged scrivener or court clerk with white hair and green eye shade has vanished. The modern stenographer, who keeps the record of a trial, is probably an energetic young man, who has passed high on the civil service list, knows something about law, is studying for a better position, or is connected with a very profitable stenographers' business on the outside.

The court proper is divided from the rest of the room by an iron or wooden rail guarded by a jealous court attendant, who is always a strong advocate of court etiquette and very properly maintains the dignity of the court. He is in uniform with a shield or badge of office conspicuously displayed and being taken from the civil service list whereon war veterans and retired firemen or policemen have a preference, is generally of a certain age. Naturally, being old and having to stand so much, he has tender feet, and with the customary effects of all secure and salaried positions, acquires both a slow and shuffling gait and the ordinary characteristics of his class. He is subject to many petty annoyances, foolish questions, repeated inquiries, people talking or arguing, little disorders pursue him on every hand.

The object of the attendant in the court is to maintain order and preserve dignity. They are almost avid in their pursuit of the ignoramus who comes in with his hat on his head or covers himself on going out before he reaches the door. Their salaries are not large but their duties are not arduous. They may seem solicitous to the judge and sometimes overbearing to the litigants and lawyers, but they are only in the position of the supes or ushers in the theater. Yet they are understanding and wise as regards the human drama constantly played before them.

The lighting of the court-room is unusually dramatic. There are no foot-lights, but the best theory of stage lighting is that there should be none. One of the most effective scenes in the modern theater is the court setting in Galsworthy's Justice. The lighting is indirect and the spots of red and green lights at the judge's desk, the corners of the jury-box and the shaded ones at the clerk's elbow, give a remarkable impression of mysterious terror.

Whatever may be the cause, there exists a marked resentment against the courts. Not only is there a complaint as to the cloying technicalities of procedure, the long and fatal delays of the law, the absurd forms and mannerisms of the trial, but underneath them all a fundamental distrust of justice itself. The complaint is heard of the inequality of justice. That there is a law for the poor man and another law for the rich. The stage gives expression to the feeling, and modern literature voices it. The high-priced millionaire escapes and the low-browed pickpocket goes to prison.

Cases are cited where the rich woman returning from a debauch of European shopping with a few thousand dollars' worth of pearls sewed in the lining of her winter bonnet is only fined, whereas the little milliner from the lower end of the city is sent to jail for trying to smuggle in a new coat. The impressario of art collections is caught at a gigantic scheme for defrauding the government of thousands of dollars on imported pictures. He hobbles into court and on the ground of ill health escapes a prison sentence and is merely fined, while the little Italian fruit vender is summarily jailed for bringing in a few dried mushrooms. The high financier who wrecks a railroad or a bank serves a light prison term and emerges like a ph[oe]nix to buy new steamboat lines or float new enterprises. But the peddler on the East Side who sells a few dollars' worth of stale fish is punished to the limit of the law.

The facts exist and to the popular mind seem unexplainable. There undoubtedly must be a reason, and what it is, is not hard to find. It seems one of the mysteries of judging and of justice, as though there were an unwritten law in the back of the human mind in favor of property rights. There is an explanation and not an inequality of justice. The facts are not as they are popularly stated or supposed to be. The public gets only a portion of the picture, and from an enormous group of cases, a few contrasted ones are picked out for the sake of the dramatic effect. The limelight of public notice is upon them and the softer lights and shadows are omitted. The public does not see the gradation. On the one hand we see the rich woman, the millionaire art dealer, the financial pirate being leniently dealt with, on the other hand we see the little milliner, the Italian fruit vender, and the peddler receiving harsh sentences.

The sharp contrasts make good newspaper stories that are appealing and touching. What the public does not see is the whole picture of all the cases of alleged inequality that come into court. These are only six out of seven hundred cases, chosen because they are melodramatic. There were nearly seven hundred other offenders that were let off with suspended sentences or light fines, of whom nothing is heard, but these three are conspicuous on account of their wealth, and the cases of the milliner, the mushroom vender, and the peddler are reported for the same reason—of being conspicuous. They are unusual on account of the sentences. The harshness of their sentences is remarkable. There may be special reasons. The six hundred and ninety-odd who are punished lightly in the same way as the rich man are not noticed.

As a matter of actual experience, the rich man has a harder time in court than the poor man. The inequality of justice, if there be any, is rather against him. Because he is rich and notorious the public prosecutor cannot let him off. If, for example, a poor man who is undoubtedly insane, commits a murder he is not tried, but is sent to an asylum for the insane. If, after several years, he recovers and is released, nothing is said about it; the public does not know. But let it be a rich lunatic and the public prosecutor is bound to bring him to trial. Public attention demands it. He may know him to be insane, but he must still prosecute him. The jury declare him insane. After years he is released from the asylum, the public thinks it a miscarriage of justice, forgetting in the meanwhile the inconspicuous poor man who unnoticed has gone through the same experience, and been released years ago.

The delays of the law are partly due to the system of courts and partly to the dullness of court procedure. The inefficiency of the system of courts and judicial procedure is shown in the practical workings of the civil courts of New York City. The antiquated organization of all the courts is like a patchwork quilt where each additional one has been added or increased as New York has grown from a village below the Indian stockade at Wall Street to its present size. So that there exist within the city limits now seven different kinds of civil courts and five kinds of criminal courts, in nearly each of which there is a separate set of rules, different customs, and distinct methods of procedure, and of them all the most technical and the most complicated are often those where they should be the most simple and easy of understanding.

Wherever the court may be the surroundings are substantially the same. The scene is laid and the carpenters have left. The spectators have found their places. The stage is empty however, there is a sudden bustle and shifting of feet, a rumor has gone abroad that something is about to happen. The court attendants take their places. One of them straightens up and with a commanding voice cries out: "Gentlemen, please rise. Hear ye, hear ye, all persons having business draw near and ye shall be heard." Enter his Honor, the Judge.