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 Map 31, 1919 
 

 
ADDRESS 
 
 OF 
 
 Charles L. Brown 
 
 (President Judge Municipal Court of Philadelphia) 
 
 Before the 
 
 NATIONAL PROBATION ASSOCIATION 
 
 THE COURTS 
 AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 ATLANTIC CITY, N. J. 
 
 MAY 3lrt, 1919 
 
 1A 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https ://arch i ve .org/detai Is/cou rtspeopleOObrow 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, this is a privilege. You 
 represent authority from all over this wide land of 
 ours. As a judge, at the head of a large court, it 
 is pleasant to come in contact with so much represen¬ 
 tative authority, from so many cities and States. We 
 can afford to relax, for yours is an association that 
 has earned an enviable reputation throughout the 
 country—an organization that is growing, and will 
 grow, larger and larger and more all-embracing in 
 its work and in its membership. 
 
 You, who are here, represent the connecting link 
 between the courts and the people. You interpret 
 the courts to the people and speak for the people to 
 the courts. Therefore, I have made “The Courts and 
 the People” my topic today. 
 
 In 1 this day, when there has been discussed the re¬ 
 call of judicial decisions, even the recall of the judges, 
 this subject embodies no new or startling idea; how¬ 
 ever, I wish to present a thought about the courts 
 and the people from a new angle, one that has been 
 growing upon all of us, judges, court officers, and 
 probation officers, social service workers, and all those 
 whose hearts are in the great work of social justice 
 for the people. 
 
 What are we going to do to bring justice nearer 
 the people in this time of unrest and dissatisfaction? 
 
 The old concept of the courts was that they were 
 cold, dispassionate, far removed from the human side 
 of the problems that confronted them. That has 
 
 3 
 
been all put aside. Today the courts are being 
 socialized. In different cities and different States the 
 method and place of beginning has differed. In New 
 York, the Magistrates’ Courts have been socialized— 
 brought nearer the people. In our city, Philadelphia, 
 and elsewhere, the courts have changed. The 
 courts have new viewpoints, broad social vision with 
 large staffs to be helpful in the solution of the prob¬ 
 lems of the people. We have new powers of closer 
 supervision and closer scrutiny and investigation into 
 the acts of the individuals that come to us asking 
 justice, or that are brought before us to have justice 
 meted out to them. 
 
 The people of the various communities obtaining 
 broader opportunities to receive social justice at the 
 same time have given to the courts a much more 
 elastic power, and in many senses a more arbitrary 
 power over them, through the probation officers and 
 others. 
 
 The great power the people have given to our 
 courts should be administered in the spirit in which 
 it was given. 
 
 The very people that come before us have helped 
 to give us that power. We have come to feel that 
 we are doing a great deal in return for our clients, 
 and for those we are called upon to judge, when we 
 provide social supervision, institutional care, medical 
 oversight and treatment. 
 
 Having all this power, we must not consider the 
 family, or the man or the woman, or the child as our 
 Court’s problem that we are solving. We must think 
 of ourselves as if we were on the other side of the 
 bar of justice—we must ask, what does this man or 
 tJhis woman or this child think of his or her own prob¬ 
 lem? Though we possess the authority to decide for 
 them, we should ask, “What do you think of your 
 own problem?” “Of your own situation?” We must 
 even ask, “How will you solve it?” “How do you 
 
 4 
 
want the Court to help you get out of this situation 
 or this difficulty?” We must keep in mind the 
 thought, “What does this man or woman expect from 
 justice?” This may sound radical to those not fa¬ 
 miliar with our modem advance in juridical procedure. 
 But those of us familiar with human problems and 
 the law know that just as we have discarded nearly 
 all the bandages of procedure and legal evidence in 
 our children’s courts and in our family courts, so 
 must we now be ready for a new step. We must ad¬ 
 mit the man or woman who is before the court into a 
 place where he or she may have a share in shaping 
 the legal decision. The legal decision is the man’s 
 future. No man’s future in America can be denied 
 him. If asked what America stands for I would say, 
 America is the land where the individual has the self- 
 determination of his own future, and that is also the 
 right of the man or woman who has made a wrong 
 step, that is also the right of the person who has 
 offended the law. This is one of the great problems 
 facing the administration of justice today. 
 
 Justice, in the modem Social Court, should lay 
 aside her sword and cast off the bandage from her 
 eyes. She should investigate through her probation 
 system before trial, and not only after judgment, and 
 she should weigh her evidence in the suppliant’s pres¬ 
 ence, and she should let her suppliant see what she’s 
 about. 
 
 The Salvation Army says, “A man may be down, 
 but he’s never out.” 
 
 There is unrest all over the world. People are 
 restless under the restraint and binding strings of 
 authority. The world has grown. People ask of 
 the Government, of the courts, of you and of me, let 
 us share in the solving of our own problems. They 
 want to do their own social work. “We want to de¬ 
 cide our own problems,” they say. When we become 
 disturbed at this, let us recall what the Talmud said 
 
 5 
 
more than a thousand years ago, “The greatest char¬ 
 ity is to show a man how to help himself.” We have 
 come to the day in our courts when the judges must 
 think of what the man on the other side of the bar 
 of justice thinks of the solution of his own prob¬ 
 lem, and it is through the probation officer that he 
 discovers this. 
 
 I say this to you as the judge of a court that has 
 a complete and elaborate social mechanism. We have 
 social workers, medical experts—the greatest in 
 Philadelphia—investigators, interpreters, probation 
 officers, psychiatrists, psychologists and the co-op¬ 
 erating service of social service experts. But our 
 ideal is not to use the service for ourselves, but to 
 use it so the individual whom the court desires to 
 benefit may have the service for the solution of his 
 or her own problems. It would be all worthless if it 
 were not so exercised. 
 
 Our psychiatric department has been making a 
 detailed study. We are studying impulses—conduct 
 as expressed in personality—inclination. We want 
 to know in which direction people are inclined, where 
 the good and bad impulses lead them. The modern 
 emphasis is on personality, on its value and sacred¬ 
 ness ; the new insistence is on the right of independent 
 judgment. Of course, we all know that there are 
 those who lack the mentality or the will for it. But 
 how many are there who come to our courts who 
 have both? There are very many, and it is those 
 whose futures we can mar by overzealous justice. 
 
 Self-determination of the individual is sound Ameri¬ 
 can doctrine. It rings through the Declaration of 
 Independence. It is the spirit of every paragraph 
 in the Constitution. 
 
 It is often said that England has an unwritten 
 Constitution that makes England a great democratic 
 country. During the war, the thought has at times 
 been expressed that England is more democratic than 
 
 6 
 
we are because England’s unwritten Constitution is 
 more elastic than ours. But we also have an unwrit¬ 
 ten Constitution. We have our unwritten American 
 ideal, and all that has been said is summed up in the 
 American ideal of individual self-expression and lib¬ 
 erty, responsible to conscience and the State only. 
 The w r orld has never known a greater ideal. 
 
 There are many social courts in America imbued 
 with this new ideal of justice. In many cities, we in 
 Philadelphia, others in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, 
 New York, Boston, the probation officer’s task goes 
 behind and beyond the court. In Philadelphia, his 
 task nowadays does not begin after sentence is passed. 
 He works with all the organizations, civic, children’s 
 legal aid, societies to protect children, etc. He and 
 they plan with the individual, and in very many cases 
 the judge’s decision depends on these plans and re¬ 
 ports and may be predetermined by them. But we 
 all hope to see the circle of united endeavor widen 
 and widen so that the individual may receive the 
 greatest benefit. 
 
 Revolving the thought in my mind, it impresses 
 me what a wonderful cohesive power all this co-opera¬ 
 tion has, and, seeing how representative you are, I 
 thought what great stimulus this national organiza¬ 
 tion of ours gives all this co-operation, that it would 
 help us all to do greater and better work if we called 
 into the membership of this national organization 
 more of the people that are working with us. Not 
 only those in the courts, but in the District Attorney’s 
 offices, in the legal aid societies, in the desertion bu¬ 
 reaus, in the children’s societies, in the psychopathic 
 laboratories and elsewhere. This organization has a 
 wonderful power for national co-operation and good 
 in the broad field of social justice, and I hope you 
 will expand and grow to perform even a greater work. 
 
 In conclusion, I will read you the poem of Sam 
 Walter Foss, who had his inspiration for its writing 
 
 7 
 
from Homer, and if you have your heart in your 
 work you are living this life today: 
 
 “THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.” 
 
 “He was a friend to man, and lived in a house by the side 
 of the road .” — Homer. 
 
 There are hermit souls that live withdrawn 
 In the peace of their self-content; 
 
 There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart, 
 
 In a fellowless firmament; 
 
 There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths 
 Where highways never ran;— 
 
 But let me live by the side of the road 
 And be a friend to man. 
 
 I see from my house by the side of the road, 
 
 By the side of the highway of life, 
 
 The men who press with the ardor of hope, 
 
 The men who are faint with the strife. 
 
 But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears, 
 Both parts of an infinite plan;— 
 
 Let me live in my house by the side of the road 
 And be a friend to man. 
 
 Let me live in a house by the side of the road, 
 
 Where the race of men go by— 
 
 The men who are good and the men who are bad, 
 
 As good and as bad as I. 
 
 I would not sit in the scorner’s seat, 
 
 Or hurl the cynic’s ban;— 
 
 Let me live in a house by the side of the road 
 And be a friend to man. 
 
 —Sam Walter Foss. 
 
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