Ninth Annual Meeting OF THE Pennsylvania Bar Association CAMBRIDGE SPRINGS, June 29, 1903. The Ninth Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania Bar Association was called to order in the Amusement Hall of the Hotel Rider at 2 o'clock p. m., President MUNSON in the chair. AFTERNOON SESSION THE PRESIDENT: Ladies and Gentlemen: The time and place fixed for the sessions of our Association having arrived, I now declare the Ninth Annual Convention of the Pennsylvania Bar Association open. And in accordance with our programme and our custom, the first matter of business is the President's address. I must ask your indulgence for the want of any title to my address: there are some things to which no name can be given. I crave your patience for a short time. I assure you I will apply to my address, as well as I may, the statute of limitations, and bring it to a conclusion as quickly as I can, under the rules of our Association. May I explain to the ladies that the statute of limitations might be explained more definitely by an anecdote of a dear old lady, the wife of a lawyer-not of this Association-who visited an American art gallery in which she saw copies of the masterpieces of the world. After she had seen the Apollo Belvedere, the Moses, the Laocoon and the Dying Gladiator, she said to the attendant, "There is one piece I have not yet seen, which my husband as a lawyer often talks about-the Statue of Limitations, where is it?" "Oh," said the attendant, "we keep that in a room all by itself;" and he pushed aside a curtain, and showed to her the masterpiece of the world, the great Venus de Milo. She put her hand over her face, and said, "You are quite right; that is the limit." (Applause.) Gentlemen of the Pennsylvania Bar Association: The early adjournment of the Legislature of 1903 leaves your President without excuse from complying with that clause of the Constitution of our Association requiring that his address at the annual meeting shall be "with particular reference to any statutory changes in the State of public interest, and any needed changes suggested by judicial decisions during the year." Realizing the impossibility of reviewing legislation in any interesting form, he prays your indulgence to stray from the path pointed out by the Constitution, and, after some general survey of late enactments, to give more consideration to questions of greater public interest suggested in thought by some of this year's legislation. Of the Acts of Assembly of the last session receiving executive approval not one is to be found which had the recommendation of this Association, although four were favorably reported by the Committee on Law Reform and received our endorsement at our last meeting. These were: (1) Regulating the admission of expert testimony; (2) Requiring the acknowledgment of a contract debt to be in writing to remove the bar of the statute of limitations; (3) Extending the statute of limitations to debts due decedents' estates, and (4) Providing that suits wrongly begun in equity may be continued at law. Avoiding the possible excuse of the legislators that the absence of action on these proposed Acts accounts for the comparative brevity of the session of 1903, the thought is suggested that if the statutes enacted by the Legislature affecting our jurisprudence, or regulating our practice, could first pass our body the results to the Commonwealth would be most beneficial. With us a proposed statute receives the careful thought of our Committee on Law Reform, in its personnel surely equal in legal ability to any judiciary committee of the Legislature, giving to the Act a consideration and study it would never receive at Harrisburg. And when our Committee has reported the form of the statute it must run the gauntlet of the Bar of the State, and in the debates of this Association receive a much more thorough and exhaustive consideration than would be accorded it on the floor of the General Assembly. It cannot be denied that the Pennsylvania Bar Association, composed as it is of leaders in the profession, is better qualified to prepare, discuss and finally agree upon an Act of Assembly adding to or changing our system of jurisprudence, or regulating legal procedure in the Courts of our Commonwealth, than any Assembly ever convened at our State capital. It would seem utopian to offer the suggestion, but an honest judgment must affirmatively answer that the interests of our whole Commonwealth would be promoted if it were forbidden to pass any statutes of the classes named until they had received the approval of this Association. Our pamphlet laws would contain less pages, but better laws, and would include statutes without constitutional flaw or meaningless language or obscure intent, or unsettling a line of authority to which the people have become accustomed and with which they have long been content. The first three objects of this Association are "to advance the science of jurisprudence, to promote the administration of justice, and to secure proper legislation." The third, to secure proper legislation, can well include the two first, and if the determination of what is proper legislation could be put in the hands of the Bar of the State, in orderly association met, the benefit to our people would at once be apparent. Surely, those whose constant occupation has to do with the law, and whose attention is not distracted by other pursuits, are far more competent to frame legislation than is an assembly chosen from every walk in life, gathered too frequently to accomplish partisan ends, too much hurried to give the subjects of legislation proper attention, and altogether too unskilled in the science to comprehend the cardinal rules of all legislation; the present law, the evil to be corrected and the remedy to secure it. Our General Assembly, indeed, not unlike every such body, is too apt to grind out legislation crude and undigested, without proper reference to or consideration of existing law, often unnecessary and disturbing well settled rules, and too frequently, in the guise of general law, practically permitting special legislation, whereby some man may gain an unjust advantage over his neighbor, or a corporation may acquire rights to the injury of the public at large. The Legislature of 1903 is to be commended both for the brevity of its session and for the comparatively little disturbance of the legal system of our Commonwealth. Still more, it has accomplished legislation on behalf of our judiciary for which it is entitled to the highest credit. Attempts have been made at other sessions to secure the enactment of statutes benefiting the Courts of Pennsylvania, but, excepting the Act of May 11, 1901, providing for the retirement on pension of judges permanently disabled, and that of June 24, 1895, creating the Superior Court, nothing of value has been enacted for many years. The bill providing for the retirement of judges who have been in commission for more than thirty years, and have arrived at the age of seventy, was a step in the right direction, and it is to be regretted that its imperfect language forbade it executive approval. No |