The Legal World not have antagonized many a thought ful and earnest student of our system of government, but the temptation to capture his audience with flashy rhetoric was too great, and his proposal df a recall of judicial decisions was not only ill-considered, but in the highest degree inflammatory and dangerous. Such utterances, made by a leader of such personal influence and magnetism, tend to excite the people to violent and arbitrary measures and to embarrass the cause of sound reform. Colonel Roosevelt's advocacy df a radical remedy for whatever mischief may be done by judges out of sympathy with the social needs of their time may be viewed as an indication of popular discontent with the present adminis tration of justice, but the legal pro fession is pushing certain reforms and innovations which repel the charge that it is unduly conservative. President Taft, by his advocacy of the workmen's compensation act favored by the Con gressional commission, has shown that he takes a different view of this subject from that taken by the New York Court of Appeals. In many states the reform of procedure is being vigorously pressed by influential elements of the bar, notably in New Jersey and Illinois. Moreover, the decision of the United States Supreme Court sustaining the Oregon initiative and referendum law as constitutional, instead of meeting with the hostile comment which would have been inevitable five years ago, has excited no significant opposition. The various popular proposals before the Ohio constitutional convention no longer seem hopelessly demagogic. The legal profession, in fact, can be said already to have taken a hand in the recon structive movement of the times, though properly reluctant to move too fast along untried paths.
221 Procedure
Resolutions were adopted at a dinner given by the Chicago Bar Association Jan. 31, providing for the appointment of a committee to prepare a complete system of rules of court, the present method of procedure being declared cumbersome and out of date. The New Jersey State Bar Associa tion approved the main features o'f the proposed practice act at a meeting at Trenton, Feb. 10, to act upon the report of the committee appointed last June to investigate and report on the method by which the administration of justice might be improved. The report of the committee was presented by Charles H. Hartshorne, chairman of the committee that prepared the report and accom panying bills. Mr. Hartshorne explained the report and the bills in detail and letters were read from Supreme Court Justices Swayze and Bergen and former Governor Fort, approving the com mittee's report. The sentiment of the meeting was by no means unanimous. The motion finally adopted, by a divided vote, was that the proposed practice act be approved as to its main purpose, and that the details of the act, which contains thirty-three sections, be left to be taken up later. Penonal Julius M. Mayer, formerly AttorneyGeneral of. New York, has been ap pointed by President Taft to be Judge of the United States Court for the Southern District of New York. Mayor Low appointed him a Justice of the Court of Special Sessions in 1902. He was reappointed after his first term by Mayor Low, but retired in 1904 to enter the race for the Attorney-Generalship. Mr. Mayer was born in New York City in 1865, and was graduated from
