of injustice from the enthusiasm, skill or eloquence of their
advocacy is quite remote.

I don't mean to say that lawyers do not differ in the force of their
statements, in their logical faculty, in their method of arranging
arguments, in their fluency and in the cogency with which they present
the cause of their respective clients. Of course the man who is
fortunate enough to engage the abler lawyer enjoys the advantage of
those gifts with which nature has endowed his representative, but that
element of inequality can hardly be eliminated from the administration
of justice. It has more weight in a jury trial than it has before a
court, for the lawyers before a court are matching their acuteness and
learning not alone with the counsel for the other side, but with the
cold scrutiny of a calm, intellectual and judicial mind, trained to
consider argument, and experienced in the elimination of the
irrelevant, the emotional and the illogical.

The jury system, though somewhat crude and not always certain, has
advantages that outweigh its possibility of injustice in the judicial
system of a free government among a free people. It is important that
the people shall have confidence in the courts, and it is important that
they shall feel that they may themselves be a part of the judicial
machinery. The value of popular confidence in the verdict of a jury
selected at random from a community is great enough to offset any
tendency to error that may at times arise from the undue influence of a
jury advocate upholding one side of the controversy before them. If the
jury is misled by the histrionic eloquence of counsel so that it clearly
violates justice in its verdict, the court may always set aside its
decision and give a new trial. Moreover, in any properly adjusted
system, the judge should be able to clear the atmosphere of any false
emotion that counsel may have created. He can remind the jury in his
charge that they are judges, who may not indulge their emotions or their
prejudices. He should follow closely the argument of counsel to the jury
in order that his charge may clear up the evidence by inviting the
attention of the jury to the weakness of proof at critical points of the
cause, or by pointing out either the bias of witnesses or their
opportunity or lack of it for observation, thereby eliminating those
phases of the controversy that the earnestness of counsel may have
seized upon to divert the attention of the jury fro