The Legal World Personal— The Bench Thefa ointment of Arba S. Van Valken burgh o laissouri to be United States District £ud5e, western district of Missouri, vice John . hillips, resigned, has been confirmed by the Senate. "Jud e Horace E. Palmer of the Court of Civil peals, Knoxville, Tenn., retired on June 1%: at the expiration of his term of oflioe. He was appointed by Governor Patterson in 1907, when the court was changed from lithe Court of Chancery Appeals, and the number of judges was increased from three to five. He returns to the practice of law at his home in Murfreesboro, Tenn., having made many friends and won high esteem through his able service on the bench. Former Chief Justice Simeon E. Baldwin of Connecticut made the address at the gradu ating exercises of the Springfield High Schools, held in Hartford June 29. His subject was “The Good of Books." “Half of the dis agreements and difficulties between men," he said, “arise out of mutual misunderstand
ings. Half the lawsuits over written contracts arise because the writers did not say exactly what the intended. Every educated Amen can, and am talking to those who have some right to the name, and can make it a perfect right-every educated American ought to be able to write a clear business letter, or family letter, or love letter, containing in plain terms just what he means to say. Benjamin Franklin had that art. Read his autobi ography and some of his essa s, and it will help you to catch the secret 0 his power." Justice Henry Billings Brown of the United States Supreme Court retired, delivered an
address on "International Courts" at the Yale Commencement. Urging the importance of doing eve thing in one's power to hasten the advent 0 universal peace, be said: “No opportunity should be lost; no argument overlooked. The general agreement of nations to submit their diflerences to arbitration will doubtless contribute powerfully to fix public attention upon the subject and ultimately strengthen a general movement for a reduc tion of armaments. Indeed, wars are not more often the deliberate acts of the rulin powers of nations than of the ebullition 0 popular feeling, against which the people need to be educated as against other epidemics. This should be the province of an educated press. But, unhappily, in their overweening desire for sensations they are generally too willing to lend themselves to popular passions and become the most uncertain and dangerous
of political guides."
In an address given before the Law Aca demy of Philadelphia June 14, udge Peter S. Grosscup of Chicago, of the nited States Circuit
ourt of A peals, explained his view
of the way to de with large corporations. He thus stated his own solution of the prob lem: "I see but one ultimate remedy, and that is to deal with the railroads that are natural monopolies, and the great industrial
combinations that have made themselves monopolies, upon the basis of their being in law, just what they are in fact——monopolies that modern conditions have made necessary; and then, putting upon them a valuation that takes into consideration eve hing through which they have gone, as we as what they now possess, allow rates and rices that will secure a fair return on su valuation and no more."
Penonal- The Bar Francis Newton Thorpe, of the Erie (Pa.) bar, has been elected to the professorship of the recently established chair of olitical science and constitutional law at t Uni versity of Pittsburgh. Professor Thorpe is known chiefly as a writer of constitutional history. He has been granted a year's absence, which he will spend with his fami y in Germany. Hon. George W. Wickersham, Attorney General of the United States, delivered the oration before the Harvard Law School Association at Cambrid e, Mass, June 28,
taking for his subject “ e Relation of Legal Education to Governmental Problems." S aking of contentment with mediocrity o attainment, that appears to be prevalent even among college-trained men, he said: "It is in my opinion one of the greatest dangers which confronts successful democ racy everywhere, the hope of averting which rests largely in men of sound legal education. The methods and standards estab lished by Laél‘ililell and carried on by Ames are those PC arly adapted to the trainin of men to deal with the great uestions 0 law and government with which t is country is today confronted. It is only by the labors, the thought, and the criticism of men who have found this living law that our govern ment may be guided and governed on safe and rogressive lines, and our jurisprudence deve oped along aths of natural, sound and wholesome growt ." Governor Charles E. Hughes of New York,
in his Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard said: "The constant endeavor, prosecuted with regrettable measure of success, to place men in public ofiice who are not corrupt in the ordinary sense, but can be relied upon to serve some particular interest, has honeycombed
