A Philadelphia Lawyer in the London Courts

The nucleus of this volume was an address delivered before the Pennsylvania State Bar Association which, finding its way into various newspapers in the United States and England, received a degree of favorable notice that seemed to warrant further pursuit of a subject heretofore apparently overlooked. Successive holiday visits to England were utilized for this purpose. As our institutions are largely derived from England, it is natural that the discussion of public questions and the glimpses of important trials afforded by the daily papers—usually murder trials or divorce cases—should more or less familiarize Americans with the English point of view in legal matters. American lawyers, indeed, must keep themselves in close touch with the actual decisions which are collected in the reports to be found in every library and which are frequently cited in our courts. Nothing in print is available, however, from which much can be learned concerning the barristers, the judges, or the solicitors, themselves, whose labors establish these precedents. They seem to have escaped the anthropologist, so curious about most vertebrates, and they must be studied in their habitat—the Inns of Court, the musty chambers and the courts themselves. The more these almost unknown creatures are investigated, the more will the pioneer appreciate the difficulty of penetrating the highly specialized professional life of England, of mastering the many peculiar customs and the elaborate etiquette by which it is governed and of reproducing the atmosphere of it all. He will find that he can do little but record his observations