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10 Women Law. J. 1 (1920-1921)

handle is hein.journals/wolj10 and id is 1 raw text is: WOMEN LAWYERS' JOURNAL Entered as Second Class Matter October 1, 1917, at the Post Office at Jamaica, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. VOL. 10, NO. 1. NEW YORK CITY, OCTOBER, 1920 $1.00 a Year NECESSITY OF A FAMILY COURT A Family Court, properly constituted and functioned is the handmaid of religion. It enforces the precepts that the church has been teaching the world for nigh on to two thousand years, to the effect, that the procreation of the race should be for the honor and service of God and the wel- fare of the State; that the family is the unit of society. In the struggle for existence the anti- social part of the community, whether their conduct is the result of lack of religious and moral stamina, physical deterioration, environment or dwarfed mentality, are the rear guard of humanity. When they came in contact with the law, the old penology caused the penal statutes to be invoked against them with the threefold object in view, namely: Punishment of the offend- ers, a deterrent to others of similar pro- clivities and hope of reformation, by de- privation of liberty. Under this system of punition, however, it developed that the percentage of in- crease in the number of inmates in penal institutions from year to year was greater than that in the growth of the population. This knowledge led to the study of the vio- lator of the law as an individual rather than in mass. By this investigation it was discovered that there were passing through our courts from day to day a group of malefactors described by a committee of which I had the privilege of being chair- man as egotistical, selfish, cruel, shal- low, lazy, unstable, neurotic, poorly bal- anced, emotional, defective, stupid and in- competent individuals. These types were the result, as well as the potential makers and breeders of crime, and it was evident from their delinquencies that their family life rested on shallow foundations. The analysis likewise developed the fact that criminal tendencies nearly always ap- peared in childhood, and if these inclina- tions in the delinquent child could be over- come, the augmentation of the above named individuals could be prevented. The moral conscience of the country was aroused to the enormity of this cancer in our body politic, but how was the malignant growth to be treated? Naturally, by going back to first principles. As the natural organ- ism of society is the family, the study of the family and its units and the laws in reference thereto became the first object of consideration in the premises. Now, the philosophy of law is not based on revolution, but rather on evolution, and while it was found that property rights were carefully protected, the liberty and person of the subject vigilantly guarded, the submerged proletariat as a class were not recognized in the judicial court organ- ization. This omission should not be taken as a criticism of either our Constitution makers or our judiciary. It must be borne in mind that it is one of the fundamentals By Judge Edward J. Dooley of a sane democracy that where the gov- ernment chooses to do everything the citi- zen is prone to do nothing, and therefore the doctrine of free will should extensively prevail, with the consequent responsibility that flows therefrom. There is a group of persons in this world who are prone to shirk their moral and legal obligations and this statement is particularly applicable to the type of human beings heretofore referred to. In- cluded therein are also the improvident, shiftless, lazy, irreligious, negligent, penur- ious, obstinate and intemperate husbands, parents, children and grandparents who are able to, but refuse to support their dependents. For these last named delin- quents, the sane (as distinguished from the faddist) sociologists determined that the police power of the State should be invoked to instill into them the lesson that the home must be cared for, the neglected wives and children nurtured, and the help- less parents and grandparents sheltered. The law of God and man so ordains, the safeguard of society so demands, and the State so decrees. It was not intended by thus invoking this power to prevent the giving of charity in proper cases, for as Frederic Ozanam, the founder of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, so eloquently and aptly says: Pub- lic charity ought to intervene in a crisis. Charity is the Samaritan who pours oil on the wounds of the traveler who has been attacked. It is the task of Justice to anti- cipate the attack. The results of these deliberations were the organization of the Social Courts, known as the Domestic Re- lations and Juvenile or Children's Courts, and functioning in the matters pertaining to the family, generally speaking, their jurisdiction is substantially as follows: The Domestic Relations Court: Every person who abandons his wife or children without adequate support, leaving them in danger of becoming a burden on the pub- lic, or parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren of sufficient financial abil- ity of a poor person who is insane, blind, old, lame, impotent or decrepit so as to be unable by work to maintain himself, and the parents and grandparents of a desti- tute child, who, at their own charge fail to support him in a manner sufficient to prevent him from being or to avoid the liability of his becoming a charge upon the public, are declared disorderly persons and compelled to pay a certain sum for the support of their dependents or suffer im- prisonment. Also, in some jurisdiction, against parents who contribute to the juvenile delinquency of their children or wards, or fail to keep them at school during school age, are treated as misde- meanants, and fined or imprisoned there- for. The Juvenile or Children's Court: All charges against children of the grade of a misdemeanor generally, cases the punish- ment for which is not more than one year's imprisonment or $500 fine, or both; all charges against children in which they can be found guilty of juvenile delinquency and all other cases in which the Court of Justice thereof, or a magistrate, has power to commit children as provided by law. A child is usually taken to mean a person under the age of sixteen years. Attached to these Domestic Relations and Children's Courts, in the cities par- ticularly, is the probation system. Pro- bation allows the justices of these courts to place the defendants on probation for stated terms and on condition that the court may deem proper. Thousands, aye, millions of dollars have been collected through the Domestic Re- lations Courts from recreant husbands, parents, children and grandparents and hundreds of families have been succored through them, causing normal life to flow and the rehabilitation of the home. So, too, thousands of children have been sal- vaged and reformatories and penal insti- tutions have lost their source of supply by the aid of and through the Children's Courts in treating the child offender as a child and not as a criminal. Through these courts the thought of Ozanam, ex- pressed upwards of eighty years ago, that justice should anticipate and ward off the attack on the family, has been partially, but not fully, carried out in America, the land of progress and humanity. The social courts recognize that demor- alized homes and incipient criminality go hand in hand. They seek to impress upon the husband and father that he has not, as the Roman head of the family of old, the absolute power over the physical and mental life of his children; that his duty to society is to uplift the members of his family rather than that they should be al- lowed to degenerate; that the better the family the better the State; that the fath- er's duty, in addition to supporting, is to educate his children; advising him of the fact that illiteracy is more likely to lead to crime than education, and the more safeguards that can be thrown around the child the more likely a normal develop- ment will ensue, and therefore better citi- zenship will follow. It will be seen by the above recital that the Domestic Relations and the Children's Courts deal with two phases of the family problem, the support of the family in the Domestic Relations Court and the moral cure and protection of the child in the children's or Juvenile Court. But there are other phases of family life affecting the family and the units thereof, of which neither of these courts have jurisdiction, for instance, the guardianship and custody of the children; the extradition of the parent guilty of abandonment and neglect to support, who has gone outside the juris- diction of the State; the trial of the ex- tradited parent; the attachment and the

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