that our laws are obeyed, so let each one of us devote his best energies to the enforcement of its laws. As when two generations ago cannons boomed from the sands of Tybee, resounding against the mountains to the North, and echoing back, informed all of our people that their liberty was at stake, every one rose en masse to defend assaulted rights, so now let our voices go forth from this historic ground, and, echoing through the State, from ocean sands to mountain heights, let it be known that the fair name of this great Commonwealth must be restored and law and order must prevail. THE PROPER PLACE OF PRECEDENT IN OUR JUDICIAL SYSTEM. ANNUAL ADDRESS BY OF PHILADELPHIA. Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Georgia Bar Association: Some years ago I prepared and read before my own State Bar Association a paper upon the Evolution of the Independence of the Judiciary, in which I told the story of the struggle of a thousand years. I also prepared and read a paper before the Virginia Bar Association entitled The Place Occupied by the Judiciary Under Our Constitutional System. Taken together and read consecutively, these papers aim at an exposition of the continuous historical development of the doctrine of judicial independence as known in America. One of my readers, Judge William O. Thomas, of Kansas City, Mo., suggested, about a year ago, as a kindred subject, that I should discuss on historical and philosophical lines The Proper Place of Precedent in Our Judicial System. Your gracious and highly appreciated invitation to deliver your Annual Address furnishes me with the opportunity of making the attempt. There has been so much said and written in the past few years concerning what has been termed judicial usurpation, judicial legislation and judicial oligarchy that it is not untimely to take our latitude and longitude and determine exactly where we stand. The difficulty in reaching the minds of the most restless critics of existing institutions lies in the fact that they are not in any real sense students of the history of the law, that they are impatient of precedent, that they have no knowledge of the processes of legal growth, that they imagine that systems which it has taken centuries to build |