Birmingham age-herald., 1894-08-14

PRESIDENT THOMAS NJ. Y.
 view of the recent conflict between tho courts and the officers of the American Railway union in Chicago the paper will doubtless attract considerable attention.
 At the opening of the second days ses- sion Moorfeld Storey, an able Massachu- sctts lawyer, will make an address, and papers dealing with Jurisprudence and Law Reform, " Judicial Administration and Remedial Procedure" Legal Educa- tion and Admission to the Bar " 'Com- mercial Law" international Law'' and "Grievances" will be read In the evening special committees on various needed re- forms in law and practice will report, and the convention will again wrestle with the vexatious divorce problem.
 On Friday the business of the conven- tion will be wound up by the election of officers for the ensuing year, and in the evening the annual dinner of the associa- tion will be held.
 The association was organized in tho courtroom of the town hall in Saratoga on Aug. 21, 1878, by about 100 lawyers, among whom were such famous jurists as Benjamin H. Bristow, William M. Evarts, George Hoadley, Edward J. Phelps and J. Randolph Tucker. The membership has since grown to about 1000 and rep rcsents nearly every state in the Union. The constitution declares that the object of the association shall be to advance the science of jurisprudence, promote the ad- ministration of justice and uniformity of legislation throughout the United States, uphold the honor of the profession of the law and encourage cordial intercourse among the members of the American bar. Any person who has been member of the bar in good standing in any state is entitled to membership in the association.
 Following is list of the presidents of the association since its foundation: James o. Broadhead, St. Louis; Benjamin H. Bristow, New York; Edward J. Phelps, Burlington, Vt; Clarkson N Potter, New York; Alexander R. Lawton, Sa- vannah Cortlandt Parker, Newark, N. J.; John W. Stevenson, Covington, Ky; William Allen Butler, New York; Thomas J. Semmes, New Orleans; George G. Wright, Des Moines; David Dudley Field, New York; Henry Hitchcock, St. Louis; Simon E. Baldwin, New York; Judge John F. Dillon, New York; J. Ran dolph Tucker, Lexington, Va. and Thomas M. Cooley, Ann Arbor, Mich AS the names plainly indicate, some of the great est lawyers America has produced have held the presidents gayel.
 Whenever occasion requires, special com mittees are appointed by the association to bring needed reforms in the laws For ex- ample, in 1890 the association indorsed the bill for the relief of the overworked supreme court of the United States. In 1889, when the association for the first time departed from its usual custom of meeting in Saratoga and convened in Chi cago instead, letters were received from MT. Gladstone and the late Lord Chief Justice Coleridge of England heartily in dorsing the bar associatlon's 8 stand in fa- vor of an international court of justice which should settle all disputes between nations and bring about that utopian time when wars shall cease to the ends of the earth.
 Thomas M. Cooley, the president of the American Bar association, was born in Attica, N. Y., 70 years ago, and when 21 years of age was admitted to the bar of Michigan, much to the surprise of the law yer he had been studying with. This wor- thy disciple of Blackstone had previously told young Cooley that he would never make lawyer, and that chopping cord wood was more in his line. How well the young lawyer has since proved that hts legal mentor was a false prophet In 1857 MT. Cooley was chosen compiler of the Michigan state laws and year later be-