Judicial Personnel Research Articles

The involvement of judicial officials other than judges in decision making in involuntary civil commitment.

In nine states, judicial personnel other than judges authorize involuntary hospitalization; the author studied the system in North Carolina by soliciting responses from all magistrates, clerks of court, and clinicians in one state hospital's 16-county catchment area. Magistrates and clerks vary widely in education, experience, knowledge of commitment, and actual practices. Clinicians were dissatisfied with the actions of magistrates; and many magistrates were dissatisfied with clinical input, although most magistrates would prefer such input prior to issuing custody orders. Magistrates would like more information, both clinical and legal, about commitment. The present system calls upon magistrates to make major decisions with insufficient knowledge and experience in mental health; initial hospitalization decisions would better be left with clinicians, as they are in many other states.

Judicial Personnel and the Court Reform of 1864**

Judicial Personnel and the Court Reform of 1864**

New Light on Cohen v. Wright: California's First Loyalty Oath Case

NATIONAL LIFE, argued a Republican party campaign appeal in 1862, should be maintained and perpetuated... by the ramification of test oaths into all departments of society-mechanical, mercantile, agricultural, and professional.' This approach to a solution of the northern disloyalty problem of the Civil War received widespread application. By the end of 1863, the national Congress and more than a dozen loyal states enacted loyalty oath legislation. California was one of those states.2 To be sure, organized disloyalty in California in 1863 was neither a threat to the safety of the Union nor a danger to the security of the state. Lincoln's extraordinary internal security apparatus had long since cast its network to the Pacific shore. This unprecedented mechanism, sanctioned in Lincoln's opinion by his constitutional powers as commander-in-chief, carelessly cut across traditional boundaries of the federal system and ignored the separation of powers practice of American government. Federal, state, and local officers, military and civil officials of all levels of government, and executive, legislative, and judicial personnel, were all involved in antidisloyalty activities. In California, for example, internal security responsibilities were shared in 1863 by Union Army and Navy commanders, agents of the national State, Treasury, and Post Office Departments, Congress' deputies of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War and of the House Committee on the Loyalty of Government Employees, and special civilian provost marshals only vaguely under War Department control. State militiamen, home guard units, municipal policemen, and members of patriotic volunteer organizations assisted national government officers and carried out purely local security policies. Vigilante excesses were common results of this mixture of personnel, policies, and purposes. Arbitrary arrests of sus-

The Judicial Council of the State of New York; Its Objectives, Methods, and Accomnlishments. I

The Judicial Council and Its Objectives. My assignment is to implement Professor Sunderland's brilliant primer on judicial councils by a more specific presentation utilizing the experiences of the New York State Judicial Council. Of the three elements that enter into a consideration of the judicial branch of government, the first—the substantive law, the law of rights and duties—is not within the province of the judicial council either in New York or elsewhere. The second element—the machinery of justice—is the principal field of the judicial council. If the council does its work well in that field, attention cannot fail to be focused upon the third and most important element—also part of a judicial council's problems—the judicial personnel.