Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Procedural Law Reform, Willis B. Perkins

Michigan Law Review

It is said that under our present practice, no matter how just the verdict and judgment of the court below may be, no lawyer can guarantee that his case may not be reversed by the Supreme Court. Is this criticism well-founded in fact; and, if so, is it a reflection upon our present methods of legal procedure? The statisticians tell us that no less than twenty per cent of all the cases taken to our appellate courts relate to questions of practice, and that throughout the country in forty per cent of these cases new trials are granted. In our …