The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1913-09-03
HONOR ". II. TAFT
WITH PRESIDENCY
AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION CLOSED SESSION
TODAY WITH ELECTION OF OFFICERS.
BIG BANQUET FOR TONIGHT
Elihu Root Will Preside TOastmaster-Some
Forceful Discussions Were Made at the
Session Today.

MIN NEAL, sept. .. - fOrIner
President William Howard Taft was
elected president of the American Bar
association today. The sessions to-
day mark the closing of the meeting
which has been a most successful
one
Tonight United States Senator Elihu
Root presides at the annual banquet
at the Windsor Hotel which will be
one of the most brilliant social af-
fairs in the history of Montreal. NJ.
Labori, the French lawyer who was
chief counsel for Capt Alfred Drefus
and now heads the Paris bar will de-
liver an address in French.
Struggle for simplification of legal
proceedure-some causes was the to-
pic discussed today by several speak
ers before the meetings of the Arneri-
can Bar association. The speakers
include William C. Hook, judge OF the
United States circuit court of appeals;
Judge Charles n. Burke, of the court
of appeals of Maryland, and William
A. Blount of Pensacola, Florida.
Justice speedily, and thus in large
plea made by VIM. A Blount This
will only be attained, said the speaker
when the task of pleading of practice
are remodelled. The principals of pre-
vailing rules, he said, should be rever-
sed, so that there should be, as the
railroads term it, a very short arbi
trary, with an elastic differential. One
of the fundamental matters declared
the speaker is a sharp definition and
separation of the functions of the
judge and the jury
"The primary cause of our conpli-
Gated procedure" said Judge Hook.
lis the universal tendency to overlook
refinement in all things. 1t is not
confined to law and procedure but
affects every phase of human life and
results in those things which make up
the wastes and burdens of society. We
are charged with blindly worshipping
at the shrine of precedent but the law
must be uniform for that is the very
essence of justice. However, the
mental accumulations OF the past are
not always authoritative. Sometimes
precedent embalms an error instead of
a principle. Our criminal procedure
is in a class by itself 1t would be
humorous if it were not tragic"
Judge Burke pleaded for simplifi-
cation of the rules of procedure, es-
pecially in cases affecting capital and
labor Criminal procedure, said
Judge Burke, also is tedious and costly
and should be radically changed.
DenOunce Some Lawyers.
The public has lost confidence in
lawyers, not for lack of intellectually,
but for the absence of character in the
according to Clarence A
Lightner, of Michigan, today. who
denounced lawyers, who,
like merchants, offer for sale or to let,
his knowledge and ability to any per-
son at a price, (and frequently to the
highest bidder regardless of the char
acter of the purchaser, or the purpose
to which the goods are to be devoted"
"These conditions are most manifest
in communities having large foreign
population This unwholesome opin
ion of the bar permeates the foreign
element. An undue proportion of
young men seeking admission to the
bar are of foreign birth or parentage
and they carry into the profession the
point of view they have acquired from
heir environment.
These facts cause regret that we
cannot have the English training for
he bar"
Pleading for more complete in
luiry into the moral character of ap-
,licants for admission to the BAR"
Nilfrey Bovey of Montreal advocated
he addition of the English system of
Omission to practice. No profession, he
Urged, should have higher personnel
han the bar. The standard can only
,e kept up, he declared by constant
fort toward the publication of the
resent personnel and elimination OF
uture undesirables through more
igid inquiry into the character and
ife of the applicant.