Suchergebnisse

With regard to the constitutionality of the proposal, the first question that occurs to every lawyer is whether the legislature may delegate the rule-making power to the courts. It seems strange that, in view of the history of English and American procedural law, this question should occur to anyone as presenting a serious objection, but the reason is, of course, that we have got so far away from the original method of regulating court procedure that our inclination is to believe that legislative codes are the only way in which court procedure can be prescribed. As a matter of fact, as pointed out by Roscoe Pound, when codes of procedure were first enacted by legislatures, many judges even went so far as to render dicta to the effect that the legislature had no power to touch the rules of court.

Out of the chaos of ill conceived reform legislation, piecemeal attempts at judicial improvement, and general failure to achieve concrete results in remedying the defects in our legal procedure, there has evolved a nation wide movement for the formation of Judicial Councils to aid in solving our procedural problems. Knowledge of this movement is important to Washington lawyers because the Washington State Bar Association at its convention in August recommended the creation of a Judicial Council for Washington, and a special committee of the bar will be appointed to secure the passage of a Judicial Council act at the next session of the Legislature.