Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/477

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The Legal World the profession to

a strictly business

basis. "The ambush of technicalities you have drawn around the corporations makes it necessary to enact drastic legis lation to tear away the shell and get at the heart. “If you want to restore your profession to the confidence of the people you can do it in a single year by following the method of simplicity. The change can be wrought, but if it is wrought without your support and assistance it will be

wrought to your discredit. “The United States is in a very critical mood in regard to its courts. You must regard the constitution on the same

level as statutes, because you can't read anything into the constitution that was

443

that there is just complaint of the delays of the law, that there are well-founded criticisms of the cost of litigation and of the other features of‘the courts, but that as a whole the system is sound and effective, with nothing suggested to re place it for its betterment. He said the law's delays are due almost wholly to the rights of appeal, and he suggested that a single appeal might act as a remedy for this defect. He admitted that

there should be a material reduction in the costs of litigation so that the criti cism that “the law is not for the poor man” may not go unchallenged. The Justice's concluding thought was that the United States, now one of the greatest Powers of the world, should be a force for the establishment and mainte

not meant to be read there." “I take it the Constitution of the United States is at any particular time what the people who live under it want it to be. From age to age it has worn the aspect of youth. It is shot through and through with the virility of the common law. Only one kind of men should be judges— men who have the elasticity of youth. The energy of the

nance of the peace of the world. The following officers were elected: president, W. M. Johnson, Hackensack; vice-presidents, James M. Hildreth, Cape

American must be relieved by the courts

Newton; secretary, William F. Kraft, Camden; treasurer, Lewis Starr, Wood bury.

and if it is not relieved it will break through the sacred fibre. I am not sug gesting sinister possibilities but speak of the future in the hope that the future

May; Edward G. Bleakly, Camden; I. W. Carmichael, Ocean; Frank Katzen back, Camden; George Silzer, Middle sex; Hugh K. Gaston, Somerset; Edw. Q. Keasby, Newark; Chas. E. Hendrick

son, Jr., Jersey City; Theo. Simonson,

Law School Graduation: may not break with the past. Are you or are you not going to be instruments

in that great irresistible process by which the human race is struggling for ward to higher institutional levels?" Other speakers at the banquet were Congressman L. Irving Handy of Dela ware, Judge Peter F. Daly of Middlesex, George L. Record, and former Judge John W. Westcott of Camden. On the second day, Chief Justice James F. Pennewill of Delaware spoke on "The Spirit of Unrest." He admitted

Attorney-General Wickersham deliv ered the Commencement oration at Yale

Law School June 19, his subject being “New States and Constitutions.” Governor

Harmon

addressed

the

graduating class of the law school of the University of Notre Dame, at South Bend, Ind., June 11. He discussed pro fessional ethics and declared that the desire for wealth was the chief source

of danger to the profession.