View single post by Joe Kelley
 Posted: Wed Sep 26th, 2018 12:59 pm
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Joe Kelley

 

Joined: Mon Nov 21st, 2005
Location: California USA
Posts: 6399
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Mana: 
 "For generations students of the American legal system who have studied the history of the law of civil pleading and procedure have devoted most of their attention to one single incident-the enactment of the Field Code of Procedure in New York in 1848. The interpretation advanced has been that prior to the 1840's the common law system of pleading "taken from England served well enough, and the people manifested little inclination to take up the burden of revision." Instead they "were too busily concerned with financial, social, and industrial problems to permit of any great activity in the direction of reforming legal procedure."' But, then, David Dudley Field with the aid of a tiny band of lawyer-reformers, perceiving that the common law rules of pleading were outmoded and unduly expensive, conceived the Code and induced the legislatures of New York and most other states to adopt it.2

"This story of Field and his Code has undoubtedly inspired generations of practitioners with faith that thought and effort are the chief ingredients of successful reform. A comprehensive study of the surviving records of trial and appellate courts in Massachusetts from 1760 to 1830 suggests, however, that the traditional view of the impact of the Field Code may be mistaken. At least in Massachusetts, the abandonment of the system of common law pleading did not occur suddenly. Instead, the common law system was gradually transformed during a period of more than a half century into something like a modern system of notice pleading. The transformation, moreover, was largely the work of the courts and was not given statutory form until it was nearly complete."


False history:
"...faith that thought and effort are the chief ingredients of successful reform..."

Questioning false history:
"...the traditional view of the impact of the Field Code may be mistaken."

The fact is that where the people once defended their power to govern the government, to insist on trial by jury in cases where someone in the government is probably causing injury to innocent people, now, clearly, the people have to ask the criminals in government for permission to try a case - trial by the country - where someone in government is caught red-handed perpetrating crimes that include treason.

THE REFORM OF COMMON LAW PLEADING IN MASSACHUSETTS 1760-1830: ADJUDICATION AS A PRELUDE TO LEGISLATION
WILLIAM E. NELSON
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=5712&context=penn_law_review