Bench (law)

“ Each man who sits in the law-court has to have two men to give him advice, one in front of himself, and the other behind him and his Thingmen; then the benches are fully occupied, with forty-eight men on each bench. No man shall sit inside the benches on the space of the law-court except those who have cases; but at other times they can sit there, and the lawman has to dispose of the seats. The people shall sit outside the benches. Only those who have cases ... have the right to rise in the law-court when laws or licenses are considered. ”

“ When, therefore, it was conceded on the argument that if the affair at Lathrop had taken place in the court-room during the sitting of the court, the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court would be unquestionable, it is difficult for me to see why the whole question of federal jurisdiction was not embraced in that concession. Assassinating a judge on the bench would no more obstruct and defeat public justice than assassinating him on his way to the bench. In each case he is proceeding in the line of official duty imposed on him by law and his official oath. ”

“ Practically all of the National and many of the State judges were highly learned in the law, and, of course, drew their inspiration from British precedents and the British bench. Indeed, some of them were more British than they were American. [91] "Let a stranger go into our courts," wrote Tyler, "and he [Pg 29] would almost believe himself in the Court of the King's Bench." [92]
This conduct of the National Judiciary furnished Jefferson with another of those "issues" of which that astute politician knew how to make such effective use. ”

“ The Bench, in summing up, called the jury's attention to the fact that defendant was not a labourer, but only a professional man; at the same time he reminded them of the impartiality of British justice, which did not admit that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor. Even the wealthiest labouring-man must be protected in the exercise of his inalienable right to work.
The accompanying photograph shows the plaintiff in the act of assisting to build a wall. ”

“ In fact, the nature and tendency of this measure are so immoral that one of the judges openly said that no honorable man can occupy a seat on the bench while Law Number 1 of 1897 remains on the statute book. ”

“ In each case the fundamental law is interpreted to suit the peculiar views of the judges who occupy the bench, until it has ceased to have any binding effect. With this state of facts, known to all men, it is not strange that the people now demand pledges from men who aspire to judicial station. ”

“ He held both places until the merger of the two courts, December 31, 1911, and still he serves, less changing than the law itself, immutable and inscrutable, but still believing:
"Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy."
The incumbent is the eighth marshal. His immediate predecessor, Dewey C. Bailey, served more than twice as long as the average term in this office.
Judge Moses Hallett took his seat on this bench January 23, 1877. How different the surroundings from those in which we are assembled! ”

“ Chief Justice Wyndham was raised from the Common Pleas to the Chancery Bench; a person whose conduct as Chief Judge of an Irish Court, gave a good earnest to the kingdom of the propriety of such promotion. Unlike most of his predecessors, or some of his successors, he tempered a natural disposition to justice with a correct knowledge of general equity, as exercised through Europe or ingrafted on the system of English law; his court, therefore, became an enlightened school, in which a mild and benevolent magistrate, by practice and example, animated the Bar to legal skill ”

“ The last effort of this extraordinary man was to puzzle the Judges about the doctrine of peremptory challenges, and the regularity of the form by which his attainder was brought into the Court of King's Bench. He was led to the one point by the authority of some ancient and ill-considered cases, and on the other it may be doubtful whether the law, as it then stood, was not with him; an intelligent people were, however, fully satisfied of two things—that he was the person named in the attainder, and that his crimes merited death ”

“ It is no exaggeration to say that, from the days when the first gold-seekers flocked into the country at the base of the Rockies until the present day, Colorado has been fortunate in having lawyers and judges who have been a credit to the state, and who, in taking care of the interests of those in need of legal advice and assistance and in administering the law, have been and are second to none in the country. ”

“ Memoirs of pioneer residents and the records of the State's early history fail to give any definite information regarding the territory over which the jurisdiction of this probate county extended—as a matter of fact, Judge Wagoner and the men who had elected him were not quite sure. In February, 1859, one month before Judge Wagoner's elevation to the bench, the Kansas legislature had enacted a law dividing the Arapahoe county of 1855 into four counties, Montana, Broderick, El Paso and Oro. ”

“ If the repeated adjudications of the king's bench, enlightened and adorned, as it then was, by the transcendent genius of Chief Justice Holt, were known to be erroneous, and contrary to former precedents, why did not the merchants, always a wealthy class of the community, make a different appeal, and before the lords in parliament, reverse and annul the erroneous judgment of the king's bench? ”

“ As long as we can get redress in the courts, as long as the laws shall be honestly administered, as long as honesty and intelligence sit upon the bench, as long as intelligence sits in the chairs of jurors, this country will stand, the law will be enforced and the law will be respected. ”

“ In furtherance of this great design, James seated on the Irish bench, men alike eminent for talents and integrity; law officers of the crown bore a similar character; barristers and attorrnies also exhibited in suitable proportion, a body of practitioners distinguished for family descent, personal character, and extensive learning. Clerks were a subordinate legal body which existed under the judges and leading barristers. Laborious research and extensive professional learning marked the judges and barristers under the reigns of the Tudors and the Stuarts ”

“ There the similarity ends, because the Miners' Courts were regularly organized and permanent institutions, while the Peoples' Courts were called together only when the occasion required action by the law-abiding element. The Peoples' Courts did not possess any authority based upon law, other than the law of self-preservation, for had they not meted out justice, the communities might as well have been turned over to the lawless element. They, more than the courts organized in accordance with the law, either Kansas or Jeffersonian, were responsible for the maintenance of law and order. ”

“ As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may, indeed, injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the Republic, which is the first and supreme law. ”

“ There are masters in the king’s bench division. Unlike the masters in the chancery division, they have original jurisdiction, and are not attached to any particular judge. They hear applications in chambers, act as taxing masters and occasionally as referees to conduct inquiries, take accounts, and assess damages. There is an appeal from the master to the judge in chambers. Formerly there was an appeal from the judge in chambers to a divisional court in every case and thence to the court of appeal, until the multiplication of appeals in small interlocutory matters became a scandal. ”

“ We find it needful for our service to advance our Attorney in that Kingdom to the place of a Judge in our Bench of Common Pleas there, and in his place of Attorney we have made choice of Sir John Davys, Knt., now our Solicitor, to succeed and he our Attorney, and to take into the room of our Solicitor, which by his remove shall he void, a Counsellor-at-Law, practising in the Kingdom, and recommended ”

“ Superadded impediments opposed their admission after the accession of King William; several gentlemen however occasionally qualified themselves for conveyancing or chamber practice, and even became members of the Inns, whereby an instant accession of able and eminent men was added to the legal roll of each kingdom.
From the accession of James I., until the reign of George III., the three Chief Judges had equal salaries, with the exception of £100 additional to the Chief Justice of the King's Bench. ”

“ In proceedings on the crown side of the king’s bench division it is still usual to apply in the first place for a rule nisi for leave to attach the alleged offender who is given an opportunity of explaining, excusing or justifying the incriminated acts. It is essential that before punishment the alleged offender should have had full notice as to the specific offence charged and opportunity of answering to it. The king’s bench procedure is that generally used for interference with the due course of criminal justice or disobedience to prerogative writs such as mandamus. ”

“ Justice Dongan survived his brethren on the Irish King's Bench in 1648." When the republican flag was boldly unfurled, and the proscription of one king followed the murder of another, this man resigned his station, though the Chief Justiceship was offered to him, (for his talents and integrity were universally acknowledged,) and the new government wished to avoid the slur which the retreat of an undoubted patriot and upright judge must occasion. Wealth and power were balanced against poverty and its attendant train—the former lost their usual attractions when incompatible with personal honour ”

“ No one would pretend that an attempt to control the deliberation of the bench, by the apprehension of violence, and subject the judges to the power of those who are, or ought to be, subordinate to them, is compatible with professional duty, or the judicial independence so indispensable to the administration of justice. And an enormity of the sort, practiced but on a single judge, would be an offence as much against the court, which is bound to protect all its members, as if it had been repeated on the person of each of them, because the consequences to suitors and the public would be the same ”

“ Step by step they were compelled to work out the solution of these problems until the rights of the users of water, the digging of ditches and establishment of reservoirs, had been settled. Years passed before many of the questions had been settled and the law laid down for all time. ”

“ We have therefore resolved in our princely judgment, that the said J. Povey's entertainment be raised unto £220 per annum, so that thereby and by the said annual fee paid by every of the Sheriffs, his income certain may become equal with the other puisne Judges. To be paid from Michaelmas last about which time he received his commission."
3d, Henry Hene, Sergeant-at-Law,—Povey made Chief Justice of the King's Bench,—patent, 14 April, 1673.—Pleasure.—25 Charles II. 1 pars f. R. 13. ”

“ The leaders at the bar therefore seldom consent to go upon the bench unless they have property enough to ensure their comfortable support after they leave it, without returning to the labors of the bar.
This is one of those evils which carry in some sort their own antidote. The lawyers, as a body, are always anxious for their own sake to have an able and independent bench. They do not wish to trust their causes, when they come before a court of last resort for final disposition, to men of inferior capacity and standing. ”

“ Pepys was Chief Justice of the Upper Bench, to which situation he had been removed from the station of Puisne Judge in England. Obscurity is merit in a period teeming with every vice which can flow from irreligion or hypocrisy. ”

“ We have such a multiplicity of courts that it has become common, and judges are so often chosen for purely political reasons, even for the Supreme Court of the United States, that the lawyer of professional dignity and self-respect hesitates to enter into the competition. Thus the bench tends to be114 filled with duffers, and many of them are also scoundrels, as the frequent complaints against their extortions and tyrannies testify. The English bench, as everyone knows, is immensely better: the fact is often noted with lamentation by American lawyers. ”

“ It is characteristic of the Inner Temple that it has and always has had a tendency for members of the same families to supply the vacancies among the Benchers. The Pollocks, Wests, Wards, and Finches point back{101} to a long roll of ancestors distinguished in the Law and the annals of the Temple. This tendency coincides with the aristocratic nature of the Society. For many centuries a candidate for Bencher was required to show at least three generations of ‘gentle blood,’ a regulation which affords a curious contrast to the more democratic nature of Oxford and Cambridge. ”

“ I wish that judges would recognize their limitations as readily when they are on the bench as when they are off. When they are off, it seems so easy.
Nor can any reference to the bar of that time omit mention of Major Edward L. Smith, urbane, soft-spoken and courteous, but who would spring with the quickness of a leopard at an antagonist off his guard ”

“ The genius of American institutions has no better illustration than the method by which the lawyers of the state were made members of the bar of the courts of these United States. Judge Samuel H. Elbert, who had been elected to the Supreme Court of the state, on its admission to the Union, was recognized, in his official capacity, by Judge Dundy, and moved the admission to the bar of—
Eugene P. Jacobson Alfred Sayre Hugh Butler Westbrooke S. Decker John W. Jenkins Mitchell Benedict and Alfred I. Blake as attorneys and counsellors at law, solicitors in chancery and proctors in admiralty. ”