824

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being the Court of Last Resort, sometimes referred to as

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the Court of Errors and no appeals. This was a check,

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you see, within the judicial system, these laymen were

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going to see to it that the lawyers did justice even

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though they might not know very much law.

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We had a system whereby these lay judges could

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practice law even while sitting on the top court. We had

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one instance in my early days where a judge, lay judge,

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wrote an opinion, he being a lawyer, and then appeared

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before a common pleas judge down at the bottom of the

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ladder and cited his own decision as being conclusive

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evidence of the fact the case should be decided in favor

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of his client. Needless to say that went out the

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window.

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Many of the courts that we had were discontinued,

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including justice of the peace. I might add we had thousands

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of justices of the peace and there were people wno said,

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if you meddle with the justice of the peace, you are

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going to have a tremendous following against the

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Constitution. Well, it didn't work out that way. It didn't

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work out that way because the citizens of New .Jersey back