| Summary: |
"OF all the mysteries of legal history, perhaps the most impenetrable
is the history of law in action, law as it was lived,
not as it was supposed to be." Of all the mysteries of urban
history, perhaps the least understood is the action of law in
urban life.1
Trial courts were potentially important social institutions
in the cities of late-nineteenth-century America. During
the period 1880-1900, a watershed for the functioning of
law, "new demands of desperate urgency were made on
the administration of justice," placing novel stresses on trial
courts. An increasing flow of immigrants from overseas
and from the surrounding countryside combined with uncertain
employment opportunities to burden urban communities
with newcomers of little or no means. Such
people found themselves entangled in wage disputes, landlord-
tenant problems, and situations involving instruments
of indebtedness. New technologies, especially in transportation
and manufacturing, raised the standard of living but
also injured and killed an increasing number. Within a
generation, "the social importance of the law of torts (of injury)"
had been transformed. Novel urban habits and practices
demanded legal controls over the hazards created by
crowded living.2
Trial courts were customarily divided into two major
branches—criminal and civil—each having its own clerk
and supporting staff but usually sharing the same judges.
The criminal branch handled prosecutions involving
wrongdoing that affected the public. The civil branch
heard only those actions relating to the private rights of individuals,
for example, those concerning debt or accidental
injury.
|