Chambers

“ Chambers maintains that 28 U.S.C. § 1927 and the various sanctioning provisions in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure [8] reflect a legislative intent to displace the inherent power. At least, he argues that they obviate or foreclose resort to the inherent power in this case. We agree with the Court of Appeals that neither proposition is persuasive. ”

“ In either case the Chambers shall see that all is equitably done, in conformity with our present Edict. The Presidial Judges, Provosts, Vice-Bailiffs, Vice-Seneschals, and others who pronounce final judgment, shall be respectively bound to obey implicitly all commands they shall receive from said Chambers, in like manner as they have heretofore obeyed our said Parliaments, under penalty of being deprived of their estates. ”

“ An act of 1821 provided for sittings in chambers between terms, and an act of 1822 empowered the sovereign to call upon the judges by warrant to sit in chambers on as many days in vacation as should seem fit, while the Law Terms Act 1830 defined the jurisdiction to be exercised at chambers. The Judges’ Chambers Act 1867 was the first act, however, to lay down proper regulations for chamber work, and the Judicature Act 1873 preserved that jurisdiction and gave power to increase it as might be directed or authorized by rules of court to be thereafter made. ”

“ He is chosen for seven years and is eligible for re-election; he is responsible to the Chambers only in case of high treason; he enjoys, conjointly with the members of the two Chambers, the right of proposing laws; he promulgates them when passed and supervises their execution; he disposes of the armed forces of France and has the right of pardon formerly vested in the Kings of France. Conformably to the advice of the Senate he may dissolve the Chamber of Deputies. Each Chamber may initiate proposals for laws, save that financial measures rest solely with the Chamber of Deputies. ”

“ Masters in Chambers are barristers who have not the proper legal faces and have had to give up being ordinary barristers on that account; in the obscurity and excitement of the Bear-Garden nobody notices that their faces are all wrong. The two chief bears rush at the Master and the other bears jostle round them, egging them on. When they see that they cannot get at the Master they begin snarling. ”

“ At all times, and under every regime, when a decision of the Chambers had been required in connection with some great enterprise, had not the natural and legitimate tactics been for one to do what might be needful to secure that decision? ”

“ Each Chamber passes its resolutions by absolute majority of votes, subject to any exceptions that may be determined by the order of business for elections. Article 81. Each Chamber has the separate right of presenting addresses to the King. No one may in person present to the Chambers, or to one of them, a petition or address. Each Chamber can transmit the communications made to it to the Ministers, and demand of them an answer to any grievances thus conveyed. Article 82. Each Chamber is entitled to appoint commissions of inquiry into facts--for its own information. ”

“ The hearings shall be public unless the Trial Chamber decides to hold the proceedings in camera in accordance with the Rules of Procedure and Evidence.
Article 21 Powers of the Chambers
1. The Special Tribunal shall confine the trial, appellate and review proceedings strictly to an expeditious hearing of the issues raised by the charges, or the grounds for appeal or review, respectively. It shall take strict measures to prevent any action that may cause unreasonable delay. ”

“ Not exactly the kind of man you'd expect to have Chambers. Mostly, they're young ones who like the freedom. An elderly gentleman: pleasant in his manners: smiling and affable: gray-haired.'
'Oh!' Then there was a real Edmund Gray of ten years' standing in the Inn, who lived or had Chambers at the number stated in the forged letters. ”

“ Impeachment and Attainder.—The functions of a judicial character which, in the capacity of the High Court of Parliament, the two chambers fulfill are of secondary importance and do not call for extended discussion. So far as the law of the subject goes, they comprise (1) the powers possessed by each of the houses to deal with the constitution and conduct of its own membership; (2) the power of the Lords to try their own members when charged with treason or felony; (3) the jurisdiction of the Lords in the capacity of a final court of appeal for the United Kingdom ”

“ The judge virtually decides in chambers, and he hears the parties in chambers, or, in other words, wherever he may choose to receive them. The client depends as much on external influence and his own solicitations, as on the law and the justice of his case. ”

“ For Second Chambers are mainly of value at times when the First Chamber is likely to rush to a mistake; and at such times no people are inclined to give careful heed to the counsel of persons whom they have not themselves chosen to give that counsel. They may be exactly such persons as they themselves would have chosen ”

“ It is not known to me that up to that period any appropriation had been required of the Chambers, and although a communication was subsequently made to the Chambers by direction of the King, recommending that the necessary provision should be made for carrying the convention into effect, it was at an advanced period of the session, and the subject was finally postponed until the next meeting of the Chambers. ”

“ Chambers, on the ground that there the concession was confirmed, in terms, according to the survey. If the view we have taken of these private surveys be correct, the difference at once disappears. But with reference more particularly to the objection, it is to be observed, that in the report of the commissioners under date of 27th November, 1833, which included one hundred and forty-two claims, of which the present case is one, the form of their decision as expressed, in respect to these imperfect grants, is uniformly in the words here used. ”

“ He was also elected a member of the Athenæum Club. These were probably the most pleasing to him of the various honours which were now the reward of his labours. When the ‘Book of Days’ was printed, Chambers returned to Scotland. ”

“ Chambers to this day is a particular poem in a book of rollicking verse called With the Band, which he published in 1895. This cherished—by very many people scattered here and there—poem had to do with Irishmen parading. One stanza will identify it. 318
In the course of writing many books, Chambers has been responsible for one or two shows. ”

“ The question of competency can only be decided at the nearest Presidial Court, to which all the principal officers of said Court, who can be found in the neighborhood must be convened, under the penalty of the proceedings being null; unless the accused party should require the competency to be decided in the said Chambers, ordered by the present Edict. ”

“ It is a curious illustration of the functions of the Privy Council as a household board that, during the whole of Elizabeth's time and the greater part of that of James, the actors could not get their fee or 'reward', except through the medium of a formal warrant addressed by that body to the Treasurer of the Chamber. ”

“ Insidious because it undermines, order, while legislative murder and confiscation induce reaction.
If a legislative chamber would act as a court, the first necessity is to eliminate its legislative character. For example, the House of Lords in England has long discharged the duties of a tribunal of last resort for the empire, and with general approbation, but only because, when sitting as a court, the law lords sit alone. Politicians and political influences are excluded. Where political influences enter disaster follows. ”

“ The Outer Chamber was also supervised by Gentlemen Ushers, some in daily, others in quarterly waiting, with Grooms of the Chamber, headed by a Groom Porter, and Pages of the Chamber under them to maintain the apartments in order, Yeomen Ushers to keep the doors, and a body of Messengers of the Chamber, ranking with the Yeomen, who besides their domestic uses were at the disposal of the Privy Council and the Secretaries for political purposes, and become very numerous by the end of the reign. ”

“ When the Supreme Court thus undertook to determine the reasonableness of legislation it assumed, under a somewhat thin disguise, the position of an upper chamber, which, though it could not originate, could absolutely veto most statutes touching the use or protection of property, for the administration of modern American society now hinges on this doctrine of judicial dispensation under the Police Power. ”

“ In fine, whenever pressure has reached a given intensity, on one pretext or another, courts have enforced or dispensed with constitutional limitations with quite as much facility as have legislatures, and for the same reasons. The only difference has been that the pressure which has operated most directly upon courts has not always been the pressure which has swayed legislatures, though sometimes both influences have combined. ”

“ This being pointedly refused by the major, the magistrates issued a formal edict demanding that the men might be produced; but this the major treated with the same contempt. They then sent a civil request for a conference on the case, and the major having consented, the provost, two bailies, and Mr Robert Park, the town-clerk, met Menzies and three of his captains in the town-clerk’s chamber. ”

“ A slight colour showed over his cheek-bones.
"If I shoot the Burgomaster and the notary and the others in there, ought I to let you go—on your own representations?"
"I have said enough," repeated Guild.
"Oh! So you refuse to plead any particular exemption on account of your nationality?"
No answer.
"And you, by your silence, permit yourself to be implicated in the responsibility of your fellow-hostages?"
No reply.
"Why?—Mr. Guild. Is it, perhaps, after all because [pg 15] you are not an American in the strictest sense of that often misused term?" ”

“ Yet pressing emergencies arise, emergencies in which a settlement of some kind must almost necessarily be reached somewhat rapidly to avert very serious disorders, and it has been under this tension, as I understand American constitutional development, that our courts have resorted to legislation. Nor is it fair for us to measure the sagacity of our great jurists by the standard of modern experience. ”

“ The Register of the Privy Council records the localities of the meetings of that body, but it must be borne in mind that the registration was not very perfect (cf. ch. ii) , and also that, although the Council ordinarily followed the court, meetings were occasionally held in Westminster or London, either at the Star Chamber or in the house of a councillor or even a citizen, when the court happened to be out of town. (d) Church bells were rung when the sovereign moved into or out of a parish, and the churchwardens entered the ringers’ fees in their accounts. ”

“ Many living men connected with the Court of Session can yet look back to a juvenile period of their lives when some of the ablest advocates and most esteemed judges were noted for their convivial habits. For example, a famous counsel named Hay, who became a judge under the designation of Lord Newton, was equally remarkable as a bacchanal and as a lawyer. ”

“ Hence the infamous renown of political decisions in legal controversies, such as bills of attainder and ex post facto laws, or special legislation to satisfy claims which could not be defended before legitimate courts, or the scandals always attending the trial of election petitions. The object of true courts is to shield the public from these and kindred abuses. ”

“ Mr. Justice Bradley, however, was not an ordinary man. He was, on the contrary, one of the ablest and strongest lawyers who sat on the federal bench during the last half of the nineteenth century; and Bradley, like Story before him, remonstrated against turning the bench of magistrates, to which he belonged, from a tribunal which should propound general rules applicable to all material facts, into a jury to find verdicts on the reasonableness of the votes of representative assemblies. ”

“ I take it to be clear that the function of a legislature is to embody the will of the dominant social force, for the time being, in a political policy explained by statutes, and when that policy has reached a certain stage of development, to cause it to be digested, together with the judicial decisions relevant to it, in a code. This process of correlation is the highest triumph of the jurist, and it was by their easy supremacy in this field of thought, that Roman lawyers chiefly showed their preeminence as compared with modern lawyers. ”

“ Jay and Marshall, Story and Bradley, and many, many more, struggled, protested, and failed. Failed, as I believe, through no fault of their own, but because fortune had placed them in a position untenable for the judge. When plunged in the vortex of politics, courts must waver as do legislatures, and nothing is to me more painful than to watch the process of deterioration by which our judges lose the instinct which should warn them to shun legislation as a breach of trust, and to cleave to those general principles which permit of no exceptions. ”

“ The motion was denied, as was the subsequent writ of mandamus filed in the Court of Appeals.↑ To make his point clear, the District Judge gave counsel copies of Judge Schwarzer's then-recent article, Sanctions Under the New Federal Rule 11-A Closer Look, 104 F.R.D. 181 (1985) .↑ Gray had resigned as counsel for Chambers and CTR several months previously.↑ In calculating the award, the District Court deducted the amounts previously awarded as compensatory damages for contempt, as well as the amount awarded as appellate sanctions. ”