whole, that it will require the combined skill and learning of the most astute legal minds throughout this vast domain to meet the many serious problems which confront us. The many strikes and disaffections of labor, and the high-minded and lawless policies advocated by labor leaders indicate a tendency on the part of millions to achieve their end, regardless of law. Every intelligent lawyer and every citizen knows that the principle of the closed shop is beyond the law and is born of revolution. When such a principle is established in this country, America will no longer be known as the land of liberty. Such a principle cannot exist consistently with the Constitution of the United States, and the great principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

It was recently suggested by two members of the Alabama Bar that the State of Alabama should have a legislative bureau, which is an idea already in successful operation in several states. The function of this bureau is to prepare bills to be passed through the legislature so that when passed they will comply with all the Constitutional requirements, and prevent the many errors which would invalidate them. The Bar Association, through such a bureau, could have prepared and then have passed laws. that would correct the many evils in our system of practice and procedure. This would be a wise expenditure on the part of the State, and would protect and preserve measures of grave importance from disastrous ends in the courts, such as was recently visited upon the Good Roads Amendment to our Constitution.

The judicial system of our State is the most important branch of our State government. Upon its honest administration depends the protection of all rights of property and person. Unless a high standard be maintained in the judiciary, our entire system of government is lowered, and the guarantees of the Constitution are weakened and will finally be destroyed. I have the deepest and most abiding belief in the rule of the people, but the judiciary perform

a highly specialized function. Practically all the administrative offices of the State are open to the aspiration of every qualified citizen, but the judiciary must be elected exclusively from that very limited number who are members of the Bar. It is unquestionable that the lawyers of the State know who are best fitted for places upon the Bench. The people, recognizing this to be true, should in some manner, as a matter of their own interest, accord to the lawyers of the State a larger and more definite part in the selection of judges. At any rate, the State Bar Association should, for its own satisfaction, establish some method of wielding a stronger influence in the selection of those who are to administer the laws from the Bench. Lawyers are more interested than other citizens in knowing that the judges before whom they practice are both learned in the law and are honest in its administration. We are more interested in having judges whose learning, honesty and independence are beyond question, because it is our moral duty to have the courts correctly define and determine the law, notwithstanding that the juries sometimes go far astray.

Some of the keenest students of government declare that the appointment of judges by the executive power, subject to confirmation by the legislative power, is the wisest method for their selection. The executive is responsible to the people, and it would be a rare occurrence when an executive would be willing to place upon the bench a dishonest, ignorant, or venal judge. In support of this view we cite the fact that nearly all appointments of judges by Governors of Alabama have subsequently been sustained by the people at the polls. One writer says that "law has become a science and a modern judge needs to know his own science just as much as does a professor of chemistry, the voters being no more fitted to choose the one than the other." On account of the supreme importance of having an able and patriotic judiciary, salaries should be paid to judges such as would induce the most

capable men to give their service to the State. It is unfortunate that some supposedly intelligent men point to the pay of our judicial officers as examples of waste and extravagance. The Attorney General of the State should be paid a salary commensurate with the importance of his office and the extraordinary labors attached thereto. Our Bar Association could do a great service to the people if it would openly declare its mind upon this subject and in every way possible bring to the minds of the people the fallacy of this view. The greatest menace to the very foundations of democratic governments is found in a weak Bench. A Bench can preserve or destroy the liberties of our country, and its personnel should be of such a high type as to constitute the very anchor of our safety.

REPORT OF THE

COMMITTEE ON JURISPRUDENCE AND LAW

REFORM

By J. M. FOSTER, Acting Chairman

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Alabama State Bar Association:

1

The lamented death of the distinguished Chairman of this Committee, the late Judge Samuel D. Weakley, has devolved upon the remaining members of the Committee the duty of preparing and presenting the annual report of the Committee, a duty which, we feel, would have been much better done if he had lived to perform it.

We know we share the sentiment of our entire membership when we deplore the loss to this Association and to our State of this able and distinguished lawyer and jurist, and regret that he was not spared longer to exemplify on this earthly stage, the virtues of a great and high-minded lawyer, and to continue his patriotic labors for the benefit of mankind.

RECENT GENERAL LEGISLATION

Prior to the meeting of the Constitutional Convention of 1901, the great volume of local legislation enacted at each session of the legislature, and the time spent by the legislature on the passage of local laws, to the apparent neglect of matters of general interest, had become recognized as an evil in urgent need of a remedy.

The present Constitution by numerous restrictions of the subjects of local laws, and by burdening local bills upon subjects as to which local laws are not prohibited, by requiring compliance with certain regulations before their introduction, has diminished the number of local laws materially.

But many lawyers and laymen have begun to doubt that any real good has resulted from the constiutional restrictions on local legislation. To some the results make it ap

pear that it would have been better to permit the legislature to employ as much of its time as it desired in the passage of local laws. To say nothing of the constant attempts to evade the constitutional restrictions by the passage of general laws which are really intended to apply only locally, it seems that too much time, and too little thought, has been given to the passage of general laws in the sessions of the legislature which have been held since the adoption of the Constitution. At any rate, the amount of general legislation has increased in a progressive ratio at each succeeding session of the legislature. The general acts passed at the sesion of 1911 are contained in seven hundred and thirty-six (736) printed pages, those of the session of 1915 in nine hundred and fifty (950) pages, those of the two sessions, the regular and the extra sessions, of the present legislature in twelve hundred and ninety-one (1291) pages. The general laws, therefore, passed in a period of nine years comprise twenty-nine hundred and seventyseven (2977) printed pages of the officially published acts

-or practically the same number of pages which the three volumes of the Code of 1907 contain. There are three thousand and fifty-nine (3059) pages of laws in the Code of 1907.

Allowing liberally for laws on an increased number of subjects which the growing complexities of modern life may render necessary, there still does not appear any valid reason for putting out so enormous a volume of general legislation in such a short period of time as nine years.

As might be suspected from the mere fact of the enactment of such a mass of general laws within so short a time, many of the laws passed at the three last preceding sessions of the legislature seem to have been crudely written and ill considered. In fact, many of them are exceedingly difficult of interpretation, if not wholly unintelligible as is notably the case with the Workmen's Compensation Act, and the so-called Blue Sky Law. Many of the acts passed at these sessions of the legislature, some