The Legal World Monthly Analysis of Leading Events
distracted much attention from the im portance of the real issue involved. That such a court will come in time to lend to the decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission a greater au thority, in such disputes, for example, as that over the differential rates of the five chief Atlantic ports, ought to be clearly recognized by the country's law makers. The opposition of the bar to the recall of judges and of judicial decisions ex presses itself in resolutions adopted by the Bar Association of the District of Columbia. These resolutions find the existing feeling of discontent in large degree based upon political, social, and moral unrest the evils of which have been augmented by political agitators, and denounce the proposed measures as destructive of the independence of the judiciary. The resolutions are negative rather than constructive in tenor, and in this respect are perhaps typical of the narrower tendency in the legal profession which refuses to admit the existence of real evils de manding wiser and more efficacious treatment than laymen will ever be able to devise. A partial remedy, for ex ample, might be afforded by the pro vision lately adopted by the Ohio constitutional convention, requiring five or six judges of the Supreme Court of that State to pronounce a law uncon stitutional.
The month has witnessed no novel development of large importance, na tional politics continuing to engross the larger part of public attention. The most prominent legal proceedings before the country seem to have been those connected with the Archbald and Hanford impeachment cases, the Gompers contempt case, the re-opening of the Thaw case, the tardy vindication of New York justice in the Brandt case, and the trial of Darrow on charges of bribing jurors. None of these litiga tions is in any way discreditable to the prosecuting party except the Thaw case. It seems as if the machinery of the New York courts should be employed for better purposes than the re-examina tion of the mental condition of an in sane murderer. Constitutional changes having been agitated in two states, Ohio and Indiana, similar work has been begun in another state, namely New Hamp shire. The newer social and political proposals have figured prominently in the proceedings of these conventions, but the action taken has not been sen sational. A great court cannot be created at one stroke, and one is therefore sur prised at the impatience shown by the Senate in striking out the salaries of the Commerce Court judges from the appropriation bill. The Commerce Court has exceeded its powers and has Personal been reversed by the Supreme Court Sam B. Dannis, who for the past six several times, but this does not prove that such a court is not needed in the years has been engaged in the prac judicial machinery of the country and tice of law in the canal zone and Pana that it may not have a useful future. ma, has lately moved his offices to the The Archbald case has undoubtedly Title Insurance Building in Los Angeles.
