The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-08-29
,MupMmuuzvxS oZMza5si1MV
 . The Diamond Edge Store.
CUSTOMS APPEALS.
Work to be Accomplished by the
 Newly Established Court.

To the Editor of the New York Times:
 The Court of Customs Appeals is now an established fact, having become so by the new tariff act of Aug. D. 1909, which will go down in history as the Payne Tariff act. I think justice requires that some reply should be made to the at tack on this tribunal from the pen of MT. Alfred Ely in the Times of the 9th inst.
 The student of customs laws, in addition to much technical knowledge peculiar to revenue systems, is required constantly to deal with the vast subject of statutory construction, and with the laws of evil dence in all of it's phases, with inter- national laws involving treaties with con stitutional and corporation law with practice and procedure, and numerous other branches of the legal profession, 10 say nothing of scientific industrial and artistic questions, and the broad field of tariff nomenclature. The assault on the wisdom of special tribunals needs no an- swer. They are justified by the history of Anglo-Amercan jurisprudence, and the professional biographies of the En- glish and American bars.
 Litigation will be dismissed in two ways by the establishment of the court:
 l. Speed will be secured in disposing of protests, and :he curse of protracted de- lays operating often as denials of jus-
 
 pensive evil has existed heretofore in the practice of suspending before the board to await the pleasure of customs at- torneys to try their cases on appeals in the courts. Mir. Ely asserts, evidently on hearsay, that the federal courts are always up with their calendars. Is he aware that cases are generally placed on trial docsets only when both parties are ready to argue them, and the longer the delay in staving off the argument the greater the accumulation of anal agous protests before the board held up for the court decision? And this delay is increased by appeals taken to the circuit courts of appeal. and later to the supreme court Under the old law over 5000 pro- tests on sugar were held up for ten years to await the final disposition of two cases appealed to the supreme court covering the same questions. Over 56,000 protests are now held up by the Board of Gener- al Appraisers under similar conditions. If in the future a test case arises on any ltigated question of law or fact it can and will be decided promptly by able judges. who give their special atten- tion to its consideration, and the life of a customs case from the time protest Is filed before the board to the period of its final termination will probably not extend over one year. Hence but few protests will accumulate, because there will be no premium placed on protracted delays
 ?. do not maintain that the courts have not been diligent in disposing of customs cases placed on their calendars for argument but that the dockets of the courts at New York and elsewhere con- tain a vast number of pending cases which for some reason remain undecided. I have a list of the cases before mo, just published, showing the following ap- proximate results
 Cases now on appeal in New York Cir
 cult. .......................... .5S0 Cases now on appeal in other circuits POP
 Total - TSP
 Some of these appeals of course, will cover thousands of protests now pending before the board
 MT. Ely entirely overlooked further most pregnant fact. This is the irrecon- cilable conflicts found in the decisions of the federal courts of different circuits on identical questions. These conflicts are referred to at some length in my letter to Attorney General Wickersham. written on an inquiry by him, and published in the Congressional Record of July 2, 1909.
 MT. Taft, with his great judicial and po- litical experience, favors the establish ment of this customs court
 may add that the strange suspicion that this court Is established in order to construe customs laws more favorably to the government Is totally unfounded, and is an unjust impeachment of the in- tegrity of both the bench and the bar. The whole country knows that the Presi- dent will never appoint to this court-a supreme court as to the customs laws and cases-men who will face a constt- uency of over 80, ,0oo. GOO of people, and who would dare as lawyers and judges to re- fuse to do justice to the people. They would be consigned, like poor Lord Ba- con, to universal execration even by uuch as they corruptly served.
 HENDERSON M SOMERVILLlE
 New York, Aug. 10. 1909.