it should be promptly decreed. It goes without saying, that in some circuits (or districts, which terms are, unfortunately, too often synonymous,) the administration of railroad properties by receivers of the courts, and the adjudications preceding and following the same; in other circuits, the decisions as to mining laws; in others, the trial of patent causes; in others, the enforcement of the revenue laws; in others, the opinions concerning the common law of trade-marks; and, in others, the pronouncements as to what constitute unconscionable business methods, commercial fraud, or unwarranted interference with trade, are unsatisfactory alike to both plaintiffs and defendants. And, even in the Supreme Court, the theory to the contrary notwithstanding, an examination of any ten volumes of the reports of that court will show that the announcements of its opinions (which is the most important factor in the determination of the law by that court) are made by its members, very largely at least, according to their personal familiarity and respective comparative study of the respective branches of the law. Several of them have, for instance, announced upon public occasions that they dislike to hear or take up patent cases for determination; and, while the Court has been understood to be almost unanimously opposed to a division of the Court into senates for the purpose of hearing cases, members of the Court have, in writing, advocated the establishment of an intermediate Appellate Court for patent causes. Now this does not come about because there is such a wide distinction between the statutory law and the metaphysics involved in patent cases, and the statutes and the logic of other branches of the law, for, as wide distinctions could be named concerning insurance, mining, maritime, corporation, revenue, railroad, banking and commercial law. When cases in these several branches of the law come on in the Supreme Court which involve constitutional questions, or involve a matter of general public concern and attention, then each member of the Court gives such a case the same consideration which he would if called upon alone to determine the case. But it will not be denied that this is not true of the mass of litigation determined in that Court. The construction of the patent laws has been announced from the Supreme Bench for the last twenty years, practically, by no greater number of Judges than would constitute a division of that Court if its membership was slightly increased and was divided into senates; and the writer thinks that such has been, and such will be, the necessary results of fact beyond the control of legislation and rules of court. The first cause of most of the present embarrassments is found in the rapid growth of our country and of the laws and rules pertaining to its commercial kaleidescope, and in the fact that, as a rule, no one man is qualified to try cases, either upon the bench or before it, in all branches of the law, as they should be tried to secure a prompt and uniform administration of justice. Whether reluctantly or otherwise, the practitioners of earlier days, who are now on the bench or at the bar, must recognize the facts just stated, and due consideration must be given thereto before a proper and a lasting remedy will be provided. Sooner or later, the logic of events, which has already divided the practice of the law and the State Judiciaries upon special lines of subject matter (including special criminal, probate, insolvency, equity and law courts in the States) will make its imprint upon the Federal Courts, perhaps first upon the Supreme Court, and later upon the trial courts, but ultimately upon both. If these facts and considerations be controlling, and if the people are still to have a Supreme Court, in fact as well as in name, then the writer is of opinion that the inevitable result will be that the hearing of arguments and the first investigation of cases in the Supreme Court will be conducted by a part only of its members (and by that part best qualified, by previous special study, to give to each case a most thorough, careful and competent consideration); and the present theory of intimate, direct, controlling direction of the course of justice in the trial courts and the confidence of the people will be maintained by a refusal to raise the jurisdictional limitations of the Supreme Court, and by a refusal to relieve its members of circuit duty. |