Registration fees for Illinois lawyers could jump as much as $49 a year if lawmakers adopt two separate measures to bolster pro-bono services and support for lawyers with drug and alcohol problems. The Illinois Supreme Court is pushing for legislation that would allow it to dedicate money raised through the fee hikes to legal services to the poor. The justices are floating a $42 increase to shore up financing for pro-bono work, as the normal funding mechanism for legal services has fallen short in recent years. Currently, support for non-profit legal aid groups comes from interest generated on the Lawyers' Trust Fund, which pools clients' money that attorneys hold for such matters as escrow funds. But low interest rates and a sagging economy mean there is less money being generated. After hours of discussion, the high court agreed that raising the registration fees would be the best way to address the declining revenues, Chief Justice Moses W. Harrison II said. The judges were reluctant to raise those fees but eventually decided that supporting probono services was important enough "and lawyers had a responsibility to contribute" to the cause, Harrison said. Last year, the high court raised the base fee for active attorneys to $180 from $140. Lawyers in their first three years of practice or who are inactive pay $90, and retired lawyers pay nothing. Legislation circulated by the high court's lobbyist specifies that the hike would apply to attorneys "paying full annual registration fees." In 2001, there were 57,392 active attorneys in Illinois and 74,311 on the full roll, according to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. The hike would raise roughly $2.4 million. Last year, interest on the trust fund totaled $4.5 million, but service and handling fees consumed $538,000 of that amount. This year's returns are projected to be anywhere between $700,000 and $1 million short of that mark, said Ruth Ann Schmitt, the executive director of Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois. Harrison said the fee hikes are designed only to counter the shortfall in interest income, not add to the total amount available. "Our legal services are already stretched to the breaking point," Schmitt said. "We have a tough time raising enough money to properly fund services that our clients need." Neither the Illinois State Bar Association nor The Chicago Bar Association has taken a stance on the proposed hikes.

Why did the high court raise the base fee for active attorneys to $180 from $140?

Allan crouched over his desk once more, pen in hand and mind blank. He contemplated a story, an outline he had laboriously constructed some time ago. He had filled his pen and raised it, the nib descending towards the paper, before the sound came: the gentle, persistent tapping of the gnarled, primeval willow touching the window with long, insistent fingers. His eyes awoke with a passionate, determined flame, though the only light came from the glutted moon. Allan filled page after page, the words escaping from his mind onto the paper. Where before they had marched in regiments, practiced in ranks and followed their leaders' commands, the words now escaped in their true forms, unhindered by any stricture. He continued long into the night, until the eldritch orb had sunk into the waiting hands of the willow, raised perpetually skyward. Arthur looked up from the results of a night's frenzied labors and looked Allan in the eye. "What is this?" he queried, indicating the pages he held in his left hand. "I decided that since I wasn't having much success with more traditional stories, I might see what sort of work I produced if I let my imagination go freely," Allan replied, somewhat less self-assured than he had been the previous night. "What in G-d's name could have possessed you to do such a thing," cried Arthur, nearly raising his voice. "After all I said the day before, why have you abandoned centuries of literary progress for some self-indulgent fantasy?" He shook the papers at Allan, raising them like a belt above the head of a disobedient son. "This is nothing but a glorified Grimm's tale, a miscarried child of Stoker, a creation less fit to be published than to be told around an open fire at the hovel of some peasant!" He spoke the last word with such heavy intonation that Allan shrank back before the physical wave of sound emanating from Arthur's throat. "Do you hate the modern system of literature? Do you personally despise the works the Enlightenment or the progress made since Shakespeare?" For a moment, Allan could hardly do more than shake his head. "No, of course not I " "Then why," Arthur barreled on, "do you disregard them all and return to this superstitious babble, this morbid, paganistic drivel?

When Allan fills pages without stricture, how does Arthur react?

Hamilton argued that the natural faculties of blacks were as good as those of free whites, and he warned that the British would arm the slaves if the patriots did not. In his 21st-century biography, Chernow cites this incident as evidence that Hamilton and Laurens saw the Revolution and the struggle against slavery as inseparable. Hamilton attacked his political opponents as demanding freedom for themselves and refusing to allow it to blacks. In January 1785, Hamilton attended the second meeting of the New York Manumission Society (NYMS). John Jay was president and Hamilton was the first secretary and later became president. Chernow notes how the membership soon included many of Hamilton's friends and associates. Hamilton was a member of the committee of the society that petitioned the legislature to end the slave trade, and that succeeded in passing legislation banning the export of slaves from New York. In the same period, Hamilton felt bound by the rule of law of the time and his law practice facilitated the return of a fugitive slave to Henry Laurens of South Carolina. He opposed the compromise at the 1787 Constitutional Convention by which the federal government could not abolish the slave trade for 20 years, and was disappointed when he lost that argument. Hamilton never supported forced emigration for freed slaves. Horton has argued from this that he would be comfortable with a multiracial society, and that this distinguished him from his contemporaries. In international affairs, he supported Toussaint L'Ouverture's black government in Haiti after the revolt that overthrew French control, as he had supported aid to the slaveowners in 1791--both measures hurt France. Scant evidence has been interpreted by a few to indicate Hamilton may have owned household slaves, as did many wealthy New Yorkers (the evidence for this is indirect; McDonald interprets it as referring to paid employees).
Is it true that Hamilton has never aided slaveowners?