Reforms Designed to Improve the Efficiency of the Bar.
—The existing requirements for admission to the bar are usually a general education equivalent to graduation from a high-school (the school in which students prepare for college or university), followed by three years of legal study either in a law school, or in a lawyer's office. Two States require at least a year in a lawyer's office irrespective of the amount of law school training received, and in some of the Southern States the required period of legal study is still only two years. Comparing the present requirements with those of the last quarter of the 19th century a decided elevation of standards and improvements in the methods of examination is observed. This has been due in the main to two factors : the development of good law schools in the majority of the States, especially the schools connected with the great State universities where the tuition is practically free, and the activities of the bar associations. Nearly all of these associations have committees on legal education and admission to the bar and in many States these committees have been active in urging on courts and legislatures the necessity for more stringent require ments. In this movement for the elevation of educational stand ards the American Bar Association has taken the lead.
The legal training of the would-be practitioner being left, especially in the larger centres of population, almost exclusively to the law schools, the law associations are taking a constantly increasing interest in the ethics of members of the bar.
Reform in the Organization of State and Federal Courts.
—The unit of State court organization in the United States was, and largely still is, the county or a unit called the judicial district composed of one or more counties. The principal trial court of each county or district is independent of similar courts in other counties or districts of the State. From each of these county or district courts there is an appeal on questions of law to an appellate court of State-wide jurisdiction. In some States there are two appellate courts, one for cases involving comparatively small amounts, and in some other States a system of intermediate appellate courts, the case on appeal going from the trial court first to the intermediate appellate and finally to the highest court.
The striking feature of the State court organization in the United States is the absence of any co-ordination of the various State courts for the efficient carrying on of judicial business.
Some progress has been made toward better co-ordination. There still remains, though in varying degree in the several States, much to be desired in the way of greater unification of court organiza tion. While little definite progress toward this goal has been made in the last 25 years, there now exists a general recognition of its importance. Perhaps on account of the difficulties involved, the initial steps toward better court organization have come, not so much through the bar associations as through a single scientific legal association—the American Judicature Society, organized in 1913. Though the record of the attempts to adjust court organ ization to the needs of modern America is significantly small, there is every sign that the coming years will witness considerable progress, and this because there has already been adopted in several important States acts which create judicial councils with power to collect data concerning judicial administration and the operation of the rules of procedure.
The Federal courts, other than the U.S. Supreme Court, were reorganized by the act of Congress of March 3, 1911. Prior to the act, while continental America was nominally divided into nine judicial circuits, the real division for all practical purposes was the district, a much smaller unit. In each district there was a district court and a circuit court, the district court having Federal criminal jurisdiction and jurisdiction in a few classes of civil cases. The circuit courts were the principal Federal civil courts of first instance. There was an appeal directly from the district and circuit courts to the U.S. Supreme Court. The act referred to abolished the circuit courts, made the district court a court of first instance in practically all Federal civil and criminal matters and divided the United States into nine circuits, with a circuit court of appeal in each circuit to act as an intermediate appellate court on questions of law. The reorganization of the lower Federal courts has proved of very considerable practical advan tage while the establishment of the circuit courts of appeal has greatly relieved the Supreme Court. Had such relief not been given, the great increase in the number of Federal cases, owing partly to the natural growth of the country and more especially to the adoption of prohibition and its enforcement by Federal statute, would have created a congestion of cases in the Supreme Court which would have indefinitely delayed all appeals.