The Man in Court

by Frederic DeWitt Wells

In a twenty-four-story office building, on a smooth gliding elevator, up seventeen stories, down a low-ceilinged corridor, past fireproof doors labeled: "Clerk's Office," "Judge's Chambers," "Witness Room," we find the typical modern court. The old idea of a very pseudo-classic courthouse on a placid village green to which the neighboring county squires have ridden, and where the jail is in the cellar and the town recorder in the attic, is fast disappearing. The old courthouse in the city, of red sandstone with battlements and turrets, minarets, and a clock tower, seems out of date.

The white marble palaces of the higher courts wherein broad stairways, paneled mahogany, stained glass, and soft noiseless carpets giving an air of repose and refined culture, are not altogether consistent with the modern spirit. The man on the street does not understand whether the marble statues on the roof are symbols of justice or late presidents of the United States. The usual courthouse of twenty years ago was a mixture of armory and Gothic church.

In the larger courthouses where there are many terms or parts in one building, there is an air of confusion. Rotundas, corridors, stairways, and elevators are constantly filled with a moving crowd of lawyers waiting for their cases to be tried, clients who have had appointments, witnesses who have been subp[oe]naed to come to court and when they get there find it is not one court, but thirty. The latter are found wandering dazedly about asking anyone who will stop to listen if they know in which part the case of Martin vs. Martin is being tried. Lunch counters, telephone booths, and a feeling of awe are in the building.

What that terror of a court of law comes from is difficult to analyze. There is the impressive majesty of the law; always about a court is the inspiring sense of something more than human. Even an empty court-room is not as other rooms. Like an empty theater there remains an atmosphere of glamour, of mystery, and yet equally true there remains a substantial, strong odor of crowds.

It is said that every theater retains its own peculiar smell. The scientific investigation of the psychology of odors is too subtle to be understandable. The question of analyzing the exudations of a nervous crowd seems interesting, but the remembrance of an anxious humanity is always present. In former times the attendant placed a small bunch of herbs and aromatic flowers on the judge's desk, and glasses of the dried bouquets remained in a row for long periods.

Hygienically considered the courts are unsanitary. If the windows are opened the cold air is apt to draw directly on the heads of the jury and the stenographer. In summer the noise of city streets, the cars, the elevated, the cries of children, the hand-organs, the flies, are not at all conformable to the supposed dignity of the court. It is well-known that the crowded and unhealthy conditions of the courts are conducive to disease as well as discomfort to the inhabitants.

The connotations of the name court are generally impressive. There is the suggestion of jail, of punishment, of something final, of absolute judgment. Also it suggests the courtyard of a tenement house, an alleyway or something shut in and confined. The philology is from the old French cort or curt. It is curious that it means something narrow. There are the suggestions of the lists, of heralds, of trumpets, of banners and knights in armor, of prancing steeds, of fair ladies watching, of joust, tournaments, and trials by battle. There is something royal about the word. We think of pomp and magnificence and purple robes, of kings on their thrones, with courtiers standing about. The conception of Diety to the simple man who visualizes, immediately takes on the form of a court. We speak of the Courts of Heaven. The pictures of Godhead represent him as sitting in the center on his raised throne with the surrounding tiers of attendant angels.

The modern court-room is only an adapted continuation of a medieval idea. On the raised dais under an unsanitary and dusty canopy of green plush sits the judge; instead of a sceptre he holds the gavel. This gavel, by the way, is falling more and more into disuse. As a symbol of authority, a little wooden hammer has become a trifle ludicrous. If a judge were to shake it too violently there might be a fear on the part of those watching that he was about to throw it at the spectators or at one of the arguing lawyers.

The judge sits at an imposing high-railed desk with standard lights at either corner. The top of the desk is usually above the level of the eyes even of the lawyer standing. This is an arrangement which is conventional and convenient; it would not be consistent with the majesty of the law if the judge should be discovered writing a personal note or taking a glance at the stock market reports in the evening paper.

The judge's chair is ordinarily a revolving one with a dip backward. Stationary chairs are trying, for those who have to remain quiet for so many hours at a time, and the swinging back and forth and twisting about gives a little relaxation.