The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-09-24

which it Is desired to interest in the association, and the meeting for or- ganization under the new constitution and election of the new officers will be held after this committee has had time to work,
 Many of the members present were from out of town, and there was con siderable interest shown in the revi- val of the organization.
 After the lunch President Perkins, of the association, spoke briefly on the importance of reviving the organiza- tion.
 Judge BaIdwin's Address.
 At the close of the luncheon Chief Justice Baldwin spoke as follows;
 It has given me pleasure to well come around this table to-day so many of my brethren, both of the bench and of the bar,
 The centennial which we meet to celebrate is one of real importance to every man interested either in sound politics or in the history of legal in- I'stitutions.
 It was in 17S4 that the supreme court of errors was first established; but as a true court, held by true | judges, 1t really dates from 1907 In 17S4 we were still too deeply under English influences to put it on real-. | ly judicial basis. It was set up as soon as one could be, after the treaty of peace with Great Britain at the l .r flied and proclaimed. Before the Revolution there had been court of last resort in the King in Council l Now there was to be one analogous in kind, not sitting in London, but Oh our own soil.
 The English parliament. as you rec ollect, had in early days large judicial functions. After It's division into two chambers the House of Lords kept them mainly to itself and, to a consid- erable extent, keeps them still. So In several of the older American colonies, the upper house in the legislature be- came, in whole or part, the supreme appellate court. It was so in New York, It is still, I believe, So in New Jersey. It was so in Connecticut until hundred years ago.
 Laws often work fairly well, which seem on their face to be intolerable To make the governor or lieutenant governor and council the sole members of our highest court of justice was not so bad thing as 1t looked. Il made the council attractive to our best men, to our best lawyers. Oliver Els. worth sat in it, both before and after he was chief justice of the United States. Oliver Wolcott, William sam uel Johnson, Jesse Root, Nathanie Smith, and five who were to be oul chief justices, Mitchell, Swift, Reeve Hosmer and Daggett, were among 1t members.
 But the main business of these men when they occupied this position, Wa not to sit as judges; it was to repre- sent clients at the bar The council sa as the supreme court of errors for { few GsS>-S or weeks, once a year. Ever! month in the year the lawyers wh' ! were councillors were practicing thei profession. They were practicing i necessarily in the courts whose judg ments the supreme court of error might be called upon to review, In deed, they sometimes practiced befor that court itself, one day on its bench and the next before it's bar.
 When there is anything wrong in tn construction or the conduct of court the bar will know 1t, and the bar soon CT or later will correct it.
 We had New Haven lawyer earl, in the last century, with a ready pei and dauntless spirit-Abraham Bish CD, an ancestor of the late Judge liar rison. He boldly and openly attacke, this mode of constituting cur suprem appellate court, in public addresses all political pamphlets. There were, he de tlared in 1S04 seven lawyers in tn council whose votes decided ever case, in the last resort. They as mem bers Of the legislature had a hand i appointing all the judges of the tri3 courts. They then, as lawyers plead ed causes before those judges, and the finally, as a court of appeal. could ov crruie the judgment of those judges.
 In 179S a statute had been passed for bidding any assistant to practice befoT the supreme court of errors, hut 1901 this had been repealed as respect cases which he had argued in the coul below. What, MT. Bishop insisted, WE to be said for a system or governmeT
 in which all power was thus tumble
 into a common mass" in the hands
 seven men?
 A popular sentiment was reused
 appeals like these which forced the r
 construction of the court on a real
 judicial basis.
 In 1906 an act was passed that fro and after the June term in 1907 tl
 supreme court of errors should be cor posed of the nine judges of the superi, court. sitting in banc. The June ter
 of the court held here in 1907 roundt
 out the first century of its eXisten
 as strictly judicial body. Next wee
 in opening our judicial year at the 0
 tober term in Hartford, will De cor
 menced the second century Of its co
 tinuous life.
 1 say continuous, because while fro
 17S4 to 1897 it's membership chang
 or might change entirely with eve
 annual election of the council. it b
 came in 1897 practically an etern
 body. Its members are not all elect lin any single year, When l first car