Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 25.pdf/454

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American Bar Association originally drawn. The Association, while supporting the numerous acts which the committee has approved, this year en dorses a new act, that designed to pre vent persons from evading laws pro hibiting marriage by marrying in other states, having been approved by the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws at Milwaukee last August (see 24 Green Bag 474). The committee laid emphasis in its report on the need of uniform decisions in cases under uniform statutes and urged every member of the Association to use his influence toward this end. A similar point was made by Charles Thaddeus Terry, in his address as president of the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. The twenty-third annual conference considered, among the great number of subjects presented by the numerous uniform acts already drafted or under consideration, proposed amend ments to the Negotiable Instruments act which were advocated by Professor Williston. The Conference voted down all amendments, however, acting on President Terry's recommendation as to the need of securing uniform judicial interpretation of uniform laws. The Conference gave re-iterated con sideration to the two proposed uniform Workmen's Compensation acts, one com pulsory, the other elective, the first drafts of which were presented at last year's meeting. The plan was approved of offering the twenty or more states which have not yet enacted any laws on this subject an opportunity to adopt uni form statutes. This subject was also considered in the Association by a special committee which presented its recom mendations as to the essentials of a welldrawn Workmen's Compensation act based on the compulsory principle. The Committee on Commercial Law is also interested in the uniform state

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laws movement, and reported that it had again introduced into the Senate the Pomerene bill, based on the Uniform Bills of Lading act. This act is in force in ten states, but the courts have held that under existing federal legislation the state bills of lading laws cannot apply to The transactions adoptionof ofinterstate uniform commerce. insurance laws is the goal toward which the Com mittee on Insurance Law is setting its face. The Committee has been author ized to co-operate with the Senate and House committees of Congress in the District of Columbia, in the preparation of an insurance code for the District of Columbia. When the draft of this code is approved by the Association, it will serve as a model statute for the several states. Legal Education The address of Walter George Smith, chairman of the Section of Legal Edu cation, embodied a timely plea for the inculcation of high professional ideals in the teaching of law and for increasing the attention devoted to the moral character of the applicant for admission to the bar, now that the question of proper intellectual preparation for the bar is nearing its solution by reason of the interest and approval widely aroused by the proposed standard rules for admis sion. As hereafter the great majority of law students "will carry into practice after admission the ideals they have imbibed in the class rooms of the law schools, a responsibility is imposed upon the individual professor to impress them with the primary duty of making ethi cal considerations of primary impor tance. . . . With such faculties as American law schools now possess, we need have no fear that together with the best technical training, every effort will be made to impress the students with noble professional ideals."