1823. Feb y. 27.

Greece. J.B's Observations on particular Articles

Judiciary

The boundaries, and thence the contents, of the several fields of Jurisdiction being thus settled, now as to the efficient causes of placement and displacement - of location and dislocation - as well as the number of the functionaries, by whom the Judicial Situations in those several fields of Jurisdiction shall be occupied.

1. As to number. In each Judicatory one Judge and no more. Reason 1st. Responsibility thus alone entire: not fractionalized and thus dissipated, appropriate moral aptitude thus maximized. Reason 2d. expence minimized. In England, there are single seated Judicatories, there are four seated Judicatories, and there are many seated Judicatories. Those in which, all circumstances taken together, the business is regarded as being of the highest importance, are of the single-seated class. Where there have been and are two Judicatories of concurrent jurisdiction, one a single-seated Judicatory, the Chancery - the other a four-seated Judicatory, the Court of Exchequer - the single-seated Judicatory, notwithstanding the two or three stages of appeal crowded into it, has at all times received much more business than the four-seated one, the Court of Exchequer. The Judicatory in which, at all times, the greatest liberties have been taken with the most obvious and indisputable rules of Justice, is that of the twelve great Judges, composed of the population of the three great Westminster Hall Courts. Not one of these Functionaries would, in any single-seated Judicatory, have dared to deliver any such decisions as are so many of those in which all have joined, screened from the public eye by concealment, silence, and the delusive trappings with which he and his associates are bedecked. In SCotland, when there were fifteen of themsitting together in the highest Judicatory, it was still worse. In a word, the probability of good Judicature is everywhere not directly, but inversely, as the number of the Judges. Few moral rules have ever received so full a proof from experience.

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