David Josiah Brewer

“ The very thought of a judicial office is that its functions are not partisan or political, and that he who occupies such office stands indifferent to all questions of mere party success. It carries, also, the further thought that in the discharge of his judicial functions the magistrate exercises a personal and judicial consideration of every charge made, and subjects no one to the annoyance and disgrace of arrest until, after personal and careful investigation, he, as a magistrate, believes him to be guilty of a violation of law. ”

“ The testimony is not preserved, and we must rest upon the findings of fact made by the court of claims, and upon them, irrespective of what may be considered in the sixth finding as partially a conclusion of law, it is evident that the action of the commissioner was in no just sense the action of a judicial officer, instituted for the sake of upholding the laws of the United States and the punishment of crime. ”

“ The idea of a perfunctory discharge of these duties, of a transfer of responsibility to mere clerks, of a wholesale proceeding against a multitude of citizens without personal inquiry as to the probability of the charge against each, is something abhorrent to the true and reasonable understanding of the conditions of judicial action. ”