The Legal World Justice M. M. Neil of Trenton, Tenn., has been elected by the unanimous vote of the Supreme Court of Tennessee to succeed Judge John K. Shields, resigned, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The new Chief Justice ranks as the senior member of the court, having been on the supreme bench since 1902. Before his service on the supreme bench he was judge of the Court of Chancery Appeals. Chief Justice Stanton J. Peelle, of the Court of Claims of the United States, having attained the age of seventy years, retired from that court on Tues day, February 11, after a term of ser vice extending over nearly twenty-one years. The ceremonies attending the retirement were held in the courtroom, and a beautiful silver loving cup was presented to him by the court officers and employees. Ambassador James Bryce was made the first honorary member of the Acad emy of Political Science at a meeting of the trustees, held March 14, at Colum bia University. Mr. Bryce on returning to England will become one of the representatives of Great Britain at The Hague, and, while he did not talk at length on the topic of universal peace, he said that he felt the advance made in that direction depended largely on the support received from the United States and Great Britain. It has been assumed that President Wilson will have the appointment of a judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit in July, to succeed Judge Morrow of San Francisco, who, it has been stated, will then retire from the bench. Judge Morrow may retire in July on a pension, if he chooses to do so. But
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retirement is not compulsory in the federal judiciary department, and as Judge Morrow is now enjoying good health and his duties are agreeable, he may not find it convenient or necessary to retire promptly on the stroke of the hour. Chief Justice Arthur P. Rugg of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, speaking before Harvard Law School men March 2 on "The Lawyer in his Relation to Society," referred to the important changes that had come over the jurisprudence of the state during the twenty years he had been in active practice. "In 1887," he said, "came the Employers' Liability Act, an act in which Massachusetts was a pioneer in this country, with the single exception of Alabama, which was a year or two before us, and I count that law an ad vance in jurisprudence not only because it remedied the injustice of modern con ditions by making manifest certain de fects fixed in the common law, but in its larger aspects because of its influ ence in producing indirectly better in dustrial conditions. A few years later there came the provision enabling courts to sentence criminals over exceptions. When I first came to the bar it was one of the understood practices of defen dants in criminal cases to get some sort of exceptions filed which of itself sus pended the imposition or execution of sentence until the matter could be dis posed of by the Supreme Court. I think the first year I was admitted to the bar the first volume of reports that came out contained forty-four criminal cases which involved no new or important point of law which deserved meritorious consideration of a court of last resort. The provision of the law for the sen tencing of criminals over exceptions has marked a very important advance
