America's First Woman Lawyer by Jane M. Friedman

Author:Jane M. Friedman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prometheus
Published: 2019-08-15T16:00:00+00:00

It should be noted that Myra did not assert that the low quality of many of the justices of the peace was due to political trade-offs within the appointing board of judges. Indeed, she praised the appointing judges, calling them “honest and capable men” who had “tried to do their duty.” Moreover, she defined the problem as simply being that “the appointing board [of judges] is too large to work efficiently,” and let her readers draw their own conclusions. Thisserves as an example of Myra’s political acumen. She consistently refrained from attacking the integrity of any individual judge who was currently sitting on any court in Illinois. She must have believed that she would not be able to achieve her broader goals unless she continued to maintain the good will of those who sat in judgment.

In another editorial, Myra discussed a second negative aspect of the appointment process. Its effect on the appointing judges was both time-consuming and excruciating:

There are nineteen justices [of the peace] to be appointed, and at least two hundred applicants for the position…. To read all these [applications] and come to an intelligent conclusion… would require weeks of time to say nothing of the button-holing to which the judges have to submit. This is not properly a judicial duty and the judges ought to be relieved from it. To ask the judges to appoint the justices is as bad, if not quite, as to ask aprisoner to run an Indian gauntlet.56

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