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use and answers the purpose; in a city like Chicago it costs about $1,000 to understand the law in the first place without administering. I have had some little experience in real estate law and I do not know one-tenth of what is necessary to know about this law. I know the wife must join in the deed, and you must have a clause in the deed that you release the homestead right, if it happens to be a homestead; I think I know that much, and maybe one or two things more, and I have spent days upon it; it is an awful nuisance. It is well enough to have a homestead right, but there ought to be the privilege some way of paying off the thousand dollars or reducing it to the shape of a lien or mortgage and letting the title pass.

One suggestion more in regard to the rights of appeal, this system of appeals, as Mr. Gross called it. There are many very valuable suggestions, in the main I think it ought to be adopted, but one objection I think obtains, there is this that it subdivides the different appeals into too many classes. It is hard enough nowadays to know where an appeal goes to, which court, and when it becomes final with the provisions we have today; it is an education sometimes to know whether an appeal is properly taken to the Supreme Court or whether an appeal to the Appellate Court is properly taken, or whether the Appellate Court's opinion is final. That provision allowing appeals from the Probate Courts or the County Courts to the Appellate Court direct is very valuable; and there are several other provisions, as I say, of special merit, yet the Commission ought not, in my judgment, subdivide the different cases to such a great extent at least, as his suggestions indicate, in which appeals shall be considered final or otherwise. In regard to the jurisdiction of the Appellate Court being final, I think in certain cases $5,000 is the least amount that should be considered. Thirty years ago $1,000 was considered sufficient; ten years hence $1,000 will not look as formidable

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or as proper a figure as $5,000 does today, I do not think it should be less than that.

JUDGE MORAN: There are one or two suggestions made by the Commission that I think ought to be adopted with great hesitation. In the main I think the work of the Commission as discharged to the extent that they have gone, is admirable, they have made many valuable suggestions. I think most of the suggestions will appeal to and receive the approval of practitioners generally. I have marked with a pencil a few, however, that I think should not be adopted.

Number 7, on page 4, is one. No judgment at law or decree in chancery to be reversed, etc., when the reviewing court is satisfied from the case presented that substantial justice or equity has been accomplished. I think that is wholly unnecessary. It has been established law by the Supreme Court of this State and has been universally followed by the Appellate Court so far as I know, that they do not reverse a case where they can see that the error pointed out in the record has not injuriously affected the result or any person. That is the settled law of this State, I do not think it ought to be put in the shape of legislation, for this reason, I apprehend that there is no judge who has found error in the record and only addressed himself to the question of whether justice was done that has not felt that he is assuming a most grave responsibility and that he is attempting to discharge a duty that it is almost impossible to discharge. I do not say that there are no cases in which error is found in the record where the reviewing court can not clearly say that no injury has been done and that justice does not require that the case ought to be reversed; we know as a matter of experience that there have been many such cases, but there is danger in it, extreme danger in it. The place where justice is to be done in a case is in the nisi prius court; there is never the same opportunity, no court can do the same justice between the parties that is to be done in the nisi prius court. The perfection of a trial at common law

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is a trial before an impartial jury, before a learned Judge and a conclusion reached without error in the record, that is justice according to our system of jurisprudence.

(Applause.)

Now every tribunal that reviews that record is reviewing it for the purpose of correction and the tribunal that reviews it does not see the parties, is taken out of the atmosphere of the trial and has its attention directed to errors in the record. If a Judge sits in a trial he may be able to judge whether some error that he makes has affected the result because he is there when the final judgment is to be entered according to our system, but the judge who takes the cold record to review it and finds error in it will, in oue hundred cases be uncertain whether or not a particular error has affected the result and if he says from his inspection of the record that he is satisfied that justice may be done, he has said it in the absence of the party and he said it notwithstanding an admitted error in the record.

Still it may be and as I have said before it often happens when such a case is presented a reviewing court can with a clear conscience say this error has not affected the result and this case will not be reversed because there is no injurious error in it. We ought not, however, to put it in legislation; it is a dangerous power and it ought not to be encouraged by legislation, and legislation is unnecessary; it is the established law and it ought to be left where it is, in the discretion of the Judges; they will hesitate more to give that sort of approval than they will if they have the declaration of the people of the State of Illinois encouraging that sort of result of a trial. So, for that reason I am opposed to the adoption of that because it is unnecessary.

I now refer to No. 11-Judgment, etc., reversed only as to party against whom error has been committed.

Of course, as it seems here, it would be wholly unnecessary, judgment to be reversed only as to that party against whom error is committed; of course that is always the result,

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but I apprehend it means when there are several parties on the same side of a case, several parties against whom a judgment is rendered, that the judgment shall be reversed only against the one or more of these parties against whom in the progress of the trial error was committed.

JUDGE GROSS:

You remember, Judge, that parties may join in an appeal or they may be several in their appeal; if it is reversed as to one it is reversed as to all.

JUDGE MORAN: That is a judgment at law. JUDGE GROSS: judgments at law.

JUDGE MORAN:

Yes, sir, I think we are talking about

I apprehend there would be found diffi culty in the administration of such a law. Of course it is settled law that one party can not urge as a ground of reversal an error committed against another party, that is settled. The court never reverses except for error affecting the party who asserts the error and then the court must go further and find that not only that error affected that party, but it has affected him injuriously, because the court will not reverse for error that is not injurious. I apprehend that it might be in administration exceedingly difficult, very hard. If it means what the law now is, it is unnecessary, if it means something else, which I apprehend must have been in the mind of the gentlemen who present this, it does not now occur to me how it could work with satisfaction.

Then there is an objection I have to number 13, on page 5, that is, appeals in behalf of the people in criminal cases. I might say with reference to appeals that it might be well enough to have appeals in habeas corpus cases, for I am impressed with the idea-I do not know how it may be in other parts of the State-that nisi prius Judges in this county of Cook have granted writs, habeas corpus and discharged parties on them in cases where it ought not to have been done. (Applause.) I think it has been injuriously exercised. I have no Judge in mind, I do not think of the name of one of them,

and I do not mean to criticise anybody; I think it has been dangerously exercised, and it might be perhaps profitably corrected by the Supreme Court. But I say that, subject to what I say with reference to the rest of this proposition, to give the people an appeal in criminal cases. I would have no objection to that if it did not involve a very serious danger. Now, every lawyer knows and every man who has been upon the bench knows better than any practicing lawyer who has not been upon the bench, that the most dangerous thing to come into the court is an ex parte case. You come into the court with an appeal, one side of it written up, and argued and the other side left to the court; I tell you, gentlemen, it is embarking upon a dangerous experiment. In the first place, what would be the result with the court? Take the Appellate Courts in this county, they do not, of course, have so much of this criminal business, and I need not instance them because I may refer directly to the Supreme Court; that is an overloaded court, and a court that is struggling to keep up with the business that it has to do. Complaint has been made here and I think with some justice, that that court is so overworked that we get the opinion of only one Judge on the review of a case. Now you propose to take to that court,-jump over the Appellate Courts, we will not consider them,-to take to that court appeals by the people and provide that the appeal shall not affect the rights of a man whose case is appealed. The man is tried; the court below has, it is assumed, ruled upon some question against the State, the prisoner is discharged; he cares no more about that case, and his lawyer cares no more about it either, he will not undertake to write a brief, he will not undertake to argue it. I do not say there would not be some cases where men might do it as a matter of pride, but, gentlemen, what lawyers in this busy day do as a matter of pride is very likely to be very poorly done. The way to get questions decided is to have an interest and to have a fight, and out of the fight you strike truth. Now take these appeals,