The Legal World Court, took their places on the bench, and Judge Putnam uttered a tribute on behalf of the court. Nine judges of the Supreme Court of New York State and many prominent lawyers attended a dinner given Dec. 29, by the Rochester Bar Association in honor of Justice Pardon C. Williams, who retired from the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, having reached the age limit of seventy years, after a long and honorable career. Judge Wil liam E. Werner, of the Court of Appeals paid a particular tribute to the inde pendence and strength which had char acterized Judge Williams' term of ser vice, and said that a predominant charac teristic of his life, as he saw it, was his freshness and youthfulness of spirit. Prof. George W. Kirchwey, for several years Dean and at present Kent Pro fessor of Law in Columbia Law School, speaking at the Mount Morris Baptist Church in New York Dec. 10, said : — "The law is not a thing to be reverenced; it is not static or fixed. It should com mand our respect and the respect of the bench and bar, and that is all. The Supreme Court of the United States is recognizing this fact and is taking cog nizance of the prevalent conception of right and wrong, and is finding a con struction of the old iron-bound Consti tution of the United States which will meet this social conception of right and wrong, and so we are enabled, when we have an intelligent court, to keep fairly abreast of the times and to com mand in a greater or less degree the respect of the people. The time is com ing, and that very shortly, when it will be realized that the old Constitution of the United States, framed over one hundred years ago, is entirely out of date."
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Massachusetts Bar Association
At the annual meeting of the Massa chusetts Bar Association, held Dec. 2, the subject of Workmen's Compensa tion received much discussion, but no action was taken in favor of any definite policy. While some sentiment favor able to a compulsory system expressed itself, the friends of compulsory com pensation were in a minority, and the evident feeling of the Association, as a whole, seemed to be that the subject of workmen's compensation was in a confused state, and that the complicated political and economic phases of the question need not receive the attention of a legal body. President Alfred Hemenway, in his annual address, referred to the success ful meeting of the American Bar Asso ciation in Boston last August, when the Masssachusetts Bar Association were the hosts, paid a tribute to former Chief Justice Knowlton, who recently retired, urged the importance of a high standard of professional ethics, and advocated uniform state laws. The recent Massachusetts work men's compensation act was denounced as a system of "unprincipled political opportunism" and as an evidence of no progress in the solution at all by P. Tecumseh Sherman of the legal commit tee of the National Civic Federation. He said in part: "By your Massachusetts act is formed practically a state corporation. In it you have needlessly crossed the line between state initiative in private affairs and state regulation. In short, you have adopted a system of unprincipled political opportunism, and have not established a sure and sound system. I don't believe you have made any real progress in the solution of this problem at all, and I suggest that you should go no further until you discover absolutely
