American Bar Association postponed. The report met a like fate this year, action being deferred until 1914, but with the recommendation that the committee then present a final draft which might at that time be adopted.
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structions to prepare a manual of this kind for submission to the Association. The Association adopted resolutions to give effect to this project and to express its approval of the principle of billdrafting and reference services.
Bill-Drafting A Patent Court The Special Committee on Drafting Legislation submitted an important and able report, in which three essential requirements of a legislative bill-draft ing service were thus formulated: (1) The reference service should be so organ ized and operated as to be directly contributory to the drafting service; (2) both the reference and the drafting service should be so organized as to secure permanancy of tenure; and (3) where the available force is not large enough to give expert assistance to all bills introduced, preference should be given to administration bills, that is, bills advocated by the President or Governor, commission bills, and com mittee bills, in the order named. The committee took occasion to point out the lack of any book in the English language discussing in the light of admin istrative and judicial experience the legal ways and means by which a given legislative policy can be rendered effec tive. The committee took the position that the Bar Association should lend its influence toward the production of such a manual, and submitted in an appendix a list of topics to be covered in such a work, with a request that the Associa tion continue the committee with in
The proposal for a United States Court of Patent Appeals, favored by the Committee on Patent and Copy right Law for several years, and again endorsed by the Association, was re iterated this year, the committee renew ing its objections to giving the jurisdiction of such a tribunal to the Com merce Court. That there would be business enough to occupy a separate court of five judges is evident, says the committee, from statistics received from the nine federal circuits, which show that in the first circuit the patent cases take up one third of the time of the court, in the seventh one fourth, and in the eighth one fifth. Ex-President Taft was elected president of the American Bar Association at the close of the annual meeting. Hollis R. Bailey of Boston heads the executive committee. Other officers elected were : Secretary, George Whitelock, Baltimore; treasurer, Frederick E. Wadhams, Al bany, N. Y.; executive committee, Hollis R. Bailey of Boston, Aldis B. Brown of Washington, William H. Burgess of El Paso, Tex., John H. Voorhees of Sioux Falls, S. D., and William H. Staake of Philadelphia.
