The Man in Court | Page 5

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 subpoenaed 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.
In front of the judge's dais are the counselors' or lawyers' tables, and at
one side in front and below usually another table for reporters. It is
somewhat like the arrangement in baronial halls where there was an
upper and lower table and some sat below the salt and others above.
On one side, opposite, but not as high, is the jury-box. This is a pen
with twelve seats within a high-sided inclosure like an