Roscoe Pound. The Judge

Abstract

To Roscoe Pound was given an invaluable experience rarely granted to a legal philosopher and teacher,2 the experience afforded by a position upon a judicial tribunal of high rank. In April I90I the Supreme Court of the State of Nebraska, then consisting of a chief justice and two judges,3 found itself confronted with a docket hopelessly in arrears. The legislature, coming to the aid of the court, created the Nebraska Supreme Court Commission.4 Nine commissioners were appointed by unanimous vote of the supreme court to prepare and submit opinions in over fifteen hundred cases which had accumulated in the court. The commissioners were organized into three each consisting of three members, one of whom served as chairman of his department. Appointed as one of the original commissioners, Roscoe Pound, was assigned to the Second Department.5 During Pound's tenure as a commissioner, the members of the supreme court itself wrote almost no opinions. As the docket was called, the cases were assigned equally to the departments and the chairman of each department reassigned these cases to its members. There followed the usual hearing,