If he examines,
too, in each instance what it is that is thus pertinaciously offered
and pertinaciously opposed, he will find that it almost invariably
has _something_ to do with the controversy before the court--it may
be near or more remote--but still something. Consequently it has,
logically, a certain bearing on the case, or is, under the
constitution of the human mind, proper evidence. When the judge says
it is irrelevant, he does not mean that it is logically irrelevant;
he means that it has been declared irrelevant on certain grounds of
expediency by the system of jurisprudence which he administers. He
refuses to let it go to the jury because he thinks it would befog
them or turn their attention away from the "legal issue" or, in
other words, from the one little point on which the law compels
the plaintiff and defendant to concentrate their dispute, in order
to render it triable at all by the peculiar tribunal which the
Anglo-Saxon race has chosen for the protection of its rights.
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