608
The Green Bag
be called by Governor Willson of Kentucky. The chairman of the resolutions committee, Professor Charles J. Bullock of Harvard Uni versity, announced that the committee had found the adjustment of national to state and local taxation a matter of such vital concern, requiring such serious consideration on the side of both the state and the federal govern ments, that the Association could do no better than this. The Association resolved, moreover, to disclaim any inclination to dis cuss the federal income and corporation tax questions from a political partisan as opposed to a scientific standpoint. Committees will investigate as to whether the "failure of the general property tax is due to defects in the system, or to weakness in its administration," and also the taxation of insurance companies. Dr. Otto Friedrich Gierke, Professor of German Law in the University of Berlin, and a delegate attending the recent inaugural ceremonies at Harvard University, gave the initial Lowell Institute lecture on Octo ber 4 in Boston, describing the principles underlying the government of the German Empire. The difference between American public law and German, he maintained, is less significant than that between the German and the English, or the American and the French. The fact of Great Britain having no written constitution he considered a fundamental difference between that nation and the United States. The President, he said, is more powerful than the Kaiser, the latter being no true monarch, except as King of Prussia. He referred to there being sur prising resemblances in spite of the differences between the republican and the monarchical forms of government. Under both govern ments the people regard the constitution with sacred feelings, and whether German or American attribute the rapid growth of the country to the powerful unity due to it. The inauguration of Abbott Lawrence Lowell, LL.D, as president of Harvard University, on October 7, was not without interest purely from a legal standpoint. Mr. Lowell's high attainments as a scholar in political and legal science rendered him the fitting host of an assemblage of distinguished delegates from over all the world among whom were several jurists of world-wide distinction. The new president's recognition of the important place which legal scholarship occupies in modern civilization was evinced in his characterization of those on whom were conferred honorary degrees. The Rt. Hon. James Bryce was referred to as "guide honored and beloved by all students of political science, Professor Otto Gierke of Berlin was lauded for. his "unmatched knowledge of legal and political thought since the Middle Ages," Professor Frank J. Goodnow of Columbia was described as "clear of brain and tireless of work" as an expounder of administrative law and muni cipal government, Dean John H. Wigmore
of Northwestern University was epigramnfetically characterized "a jurist in a day when lawyers are many and jurists rare," and President Henry P. Judson of the University of Chicago was spoken of as a scholar in law and political science." With the exception of Ambassador Bryce, who received the degree of Doctor of Letters, the foregoing delegates were all awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. The speech delivered by President Taft at Chicago on September 16 is important be cause of his reiterated emphasis on the evils of our court procedure. He devoted the first half of his speech to the subject of labor and said he intended to recommend to Congress in his first message legislation to carry out the platform promise as to injunctions— that no injunction or restraining order be issued without notice except where irre parable damage would result from delay, in which case a speedy hearing should be granted. He considered, however, that the present administration of both civil and criminal law furnished much more ground for com plaint and more need for reform than the decisions in injunction cases. The tendency of legislation in this country, he said, was to deprive the judge of his power to control the trial and to permit the jury to follow its own sweet will, with the consequence of a needlessly protracted trial. He thought that one of the serious defects of our criminal procedure was the system which enabled counsel "to mouse through the record to find errors that in the trial seemed of little account but are developed into great in justices in the court of appeal. A judgeship is a great office," said the President, "and the man who holds it should exercise great power, and he ought to be allowed to exercise that in a trial by jury." As for our civil procedure, "there is undue delay, and this always works for the benefit of the man with the longest purse." He thought tha appeals should be limited in cases involving small sums so that there should be a final decision in the lower court, giving the poor man the advantage of speedy justice before his resources have become exhausted by litigation. In reducing the cost of litigation, "Congress and the federal courts have not set a good example." While suits at law and in equity probably could not be united in one form of action in the federal courts, procedure, he believed, could be greatly simplified. He conceived the time ripe for the appointment of a Congressional com mission to investigate the law's delays in the federal courts and to report a system "which shall not only secure quick and cheap justice to the litigants in the federal courts, but shall offer a model to the legislatures and courts of the states by the use of which they can themselves institute reforms." As one means of cheapening litigation President Taft favored the abolition of payment of court officers by fees.
