The Judicial Council as an Aid to the Administration of Justice

Extract

Procedure is the most difficult and the least satisfactory part of the law. It is the delay, expense, and uncertainty of litigation that has always aroused popular complaint; and these are mostly matters of procedure.

Our substantive law, regulating rights and duties, is intricate enough, but on the whole it has been worked out by the courts and laid down in statutes in a way which seems to meet the general needs of society. The principles of property law, contracts, torts, trusts, agency, partnership, corporations, negotiable instruments, sales, and of all the other titles in the substantive field, are quite acceptable to the public. But when the machinery of the courts is invoked to administer these principles, interminable trouble results. Process must be issued and served to bring persons and property under the jurisdiction of the court, the parties must file their claims and defenses, objections must be heard and amendments made, evidence must be collected by various devices.