9 Jan y 1808

Notes to Judicial Grievance and Remedy Table Table VIII

Notes

* N.B Where the question, in which the decision regarded as subject to the imputation[?] of misdecision, turned on a question purely of fact, the misdecision can not operate to the prejudice of certainty, unless in /in any other supposition/ so far as it may be considered as being, on the part of the Judge, indicative of a disposition likely to be fruitful /productive/ of in instances of misdecision, on the ground of fact, on other occasions: in which case the duration of the mischief is limited at any rate by the duration of the authority of the Judge.

It is this limitation that constitutes a principal article in the advantages attached to the judicatory composed of a Judge and Jury.

To the grievance consisting of /evil produced by/ misdecision to the prejudice of certainty, by disobedience on the part of the Judge & the ordinances of the superior authority, the only direct remedy directly applicable consists in a habit of appropriate vigilance on the part of that supreme authority, a habit showing /manifesting/ itself in the practice of punishing every such act /all such acts/ of disobedience as often as they manifest themselves.

To the grievance consisting of /evil produced by/ misdecision to the prejudice of certainty by departure of the part of the Judge from a course of decision, regarded as established, viz. in a case regarded as belonging to /governed by/ jurisprudential law, the only efficient remedy consists in the conversion of the rule of action out of the essentially and incurably uncertain form of jurisprudential law, into the form of statute law: giving thereby a certain form of words, to a mass of imaginary and pretended law which of itself has none.