426
The Green Bag
masses were defined as arising (1) from the relations of the public service and industrial corporations to the national and state governments, (2) from the employer's attitude with respect towages and living conditions of the laborer, and (3) from the unsuitableness of the common law doctrine of master and servant with respect to work accidents. "A recurrence to fundamental principles, and the application of those principles to existing facts, will aid in the solution of many difficulties." The third speaker, William A. Blount of Florida, considered "The Goal and its Attainment." Mr. Blount was felici tous in his remarks about those lawyers who, like men of similar attitude in politics, social and economic, are to be classed neither as stand-patters nor as progressives, who neither think that whatever is is right nor that whatever is is wrong. This class, properly referred to as "thus far undesignated by any popular epithet," Mr. Blount called the "progressive conservatives," who "garner from the past and the present the best of grain, and make of it grist for the better ment of the future." To say that these "now constitute the great body of the American bar" seems to have been an over-confident assertion. But even though good exponents of the type may be in a minority, the general type, broadly speaking, may widely prevail. In connection with pleading, said Mr. Blount, "the marvel is not how little, but how much, has been done in the way of simplification and expedition." In this field "we have in large part left to the age behind us the niceties of dis tinctions and differences, the subtleties and keennesses which deterred, and fre quently interred, justice." But this simplification of pleading implies a sacri fice of accuracy to speed, and has re
sulted in greatly increasing the inability of the jury to distinguish between and separate issues arid to apply the law to them. Mr. Blount's paper was largely concerned with the importance of this problem of so improving procedure as to restrict the issues to be found by the jury and in this way to expedite legal actions. The popular criticism of the appellate courts for their decisions upon technicalities are largely due, the speaker pointed out, to the presumptions which the system of jury trial requires to be made. Judges should be empowered, said Mr. Blount, to work out the details of procedure in rules of court, and if there should be uniform federal practice the states would practically conform their practice to the federal standard throughout the Union. But after all, concluded Mr. Blount, the effectiveness of procedure depends upon the assiduity of bench and bar; "pleading and prac tice are but the reins with which the courts drive the . lawyers, and if the horses be sluggards, and the drivers slumberers, then the traces sag and the causes drag." Uniformity of State Laws The movement for the uniformity of state laws was shown to be making satisfactory progress; the Committee on Uniform State Laws was able to tell the Association that it had discovered signs of a wide-spread and thoroughgoing awakening, as indicated by the attitude of Governors and legislatures. During the past year there have been about twenty-five instances of the adoption of the standard uniform acts. The Nego tiable Instruments act is now in force in forty-six jurisdictions, and the Ware house Receipts act in thirty, while the other acts have been adopted in num bers of states corresponding to the periods that have elapsed since they were
