here shall be, so far as practicable, publicity and oral
procedure; and that it shall be within the competence of the courts to
decide all questions relative to the extent of the powers of the
public officials.

[Footnote 799: At the age of sixty-five they may be
retired on full salary.]

The tribunals that have been established by law comprise, beginning at
the bottom, the magistracies of the _herreds_, or hundreds, and the
justiceships of the towns; a superior court (_Overret_), with nine
judges, at Viborg, and another, with twenty judges, at Copenhagen; and
a Supreme Court (_Hoejesteret_), with a chief justice, twelve associate
judges, and eleven special judges, at Copenhagen. Of hundred
magistrates (_herredsfogder_) and town justices (_byfogder_) there
are, in all, 126. Appeal in both civil and criminal cases lies from
them to the superior courts, and thence to the supreme tribunal. There
is, in addition, a Court of Impeachment (_Rigsret_), composed of the
members of the Supreme Court, together with an equal number of (p. 569)
members of the Landsthing elected by that body as judges for a term
of four years. The principal function of this tribunal is the trial of
charges brought against ministers by the king or by the
Folkething.[800]

[Footnote 800: Arts. 68-74. Dodd, Modern
Constitutions, I., 276-277.]

*626. The Administration of Justice Act, 1908.*--In May, 1908, a
long-standing demand of the more progressive jurists was met in part
by the passage of an elaborate Administration of Justice bill, whereby
there was carried further than previously the separation of the
general administrative system of the kingdom from the administration
of justice. Not until the enactment of this measure were the
constitutional guarantees of jury trial, publicity of judicial
proceedings, and the independence of the judiciary put effectively in
force. Curiously enough, the drafting and advocacy of the bill fell
principally to a minister, Alberti, who was on the point of being
proved one of the most deliberate criminals of the generation. The
measure, which comprised 1,015 clauses, introduced no modification in
the existing hierarchy of tribunals, but it readjusted in detail the
functions of the several courts and defined more specifically the
procedure to be employed in the trial of various kinds of cases. One
provision which it contains is that a ju