Justice Postponed

For who would bear the whips and

scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's

contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's

delay . . .?

Bouncing among the other political footballs on Capitol Hill last week was a request from President Eisenhower to create 40 additional federal judgeships. Because he thought the need urgent, Ike offered to split appointments evenly between parties. In no such hurry, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson answered that there was no time in so short a session to select and confirm new judges. "Most regrettable," rumbled Attorney General William P. Rogers. Johnson, he charged, was ignoring "thousands of Americans who are denied justice because of delay."

An old legal maxim holds that "justice delayed is justice denied." If that is true, then plenty of Americans are denied justice. The Bill of Rights guarantees the defendant a "speedy" trial in criminal prosecutions, but in civil cases the wheels of justice may turn with agonizing slowness. Largely because of an upsurge in personal-injury suits during the postwar years, the average elapsed time between the filing of a federal civil suit and disposition of the case has increased from nine months in 1945 to 15 months now. In many state and local courts, justice is even slower. On the average, a civil suit drags on for 34 months in Pittsburgh, 61 months in New York's suburban Nassau County, a heartbreaking 70 months in Chicago.

Delays occur in part because the U.S. court system, in a time of increasing U.S. population, is short in manpower, in part because legal techniques have not kept pace, in part because of the population's increased proclivity for injuring itself, for infringing on neighbor's rights, and for going to court. To overcome the delays, tradition-minded jurists are gingerly trying new techniques. These include longer court days, sessions during summer (when the courts are ordinarily recessed), and giving priority to nonjury trials in order to encourage litigants to choose these speedier hearings. Even so, the legal profession fears that overworked judges mean underdone decisions. Or, as the New York City Bar Association puts it more politely: "When the case load on the individual judge becomes too heavy, not only does court congestion occur, but the quality of the justice which is dispensed must ultimately be adversely affected." One obvious solution for both .federal and state courts: more judges.

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