Chicago Convention

Once each year prime lawyers of the land are drawn together by the meeting of the American Bar Association, their profession's most august and potent national organization. Last week the A. B. A. held its 53rd annual convention in Chicago. Of its 29,386 members,* 2,415 crowded into the Stevens Hotel ballroom, jostled about among friends in lobbies, listened to many a long speech. Sad-eyed Henry Upson Sims of Birmingham, Ala., A. B. A. president, welcomed delegates with assurances that constitutional liberty was still safe in the land, that "visions of social strife are but phantasmagoria of morbid brains."

Prohibition was something on which an overwhelming majority of A. B. A. conventioneers last week wanted to take a stand. At past meetings the subject had been ruled off the floor. Members' demands that the association drop its neutrality and vote squarely yes-or-no on Prohibition reached such a pitch that the A. B. A. executive committee decided to forestall a public outburst on the convention floor by polling by mail the full membership. On its own authority the committee sent each and every member two questions: 1) Do you favor a referendum by the Bar Association on the 18th Amendment? 2) Do you favor repeal of the 18th Amendment? The answers were to be returned in separate envelopes. The executive committee would first count the vote on Question No. 1 to see if the membership approved of the policy of an A. B. A. referendum. If a majority did approve, answers to Question No. 2 would be counted. If not, such answers would be burned without counting.

Last week's convention had not been going a good hour before Dry lawyers, led by Judge James Franklin Ailshie of Idaho, rose to object to the executives' action on the ground that Prohibition was a political matter and therefore not a proper question for the A. B. A. They demanded that the convention order the executive committee to recall its referendum ballots, despite the fact that some 15,000 answers had already been received. President Sims ruled out their objections. When the Drys appealed from his decision, a rising vote showed the convention so overwhelmingly in favor of the referendum that the secretary did not bother to count noses. The Drys then won this concession: though voting closes Oct. 15, the referendum result will not be announced until Nov. 10 ai the earliest, so that it will not influence the general elections of Nov. 4.

P: Prohibition came again before the convention when Chairman George Woodward Wickersham of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement gave his standard speech on the commission's work. He bemoaned the public assumption that his commission was to deal primarily with Prohibition, denied a citizen's right to pick and choose among laws to be obeyed, agreed that criminal law was being unsatisfactorily administered.

P: Welcoming 200 foreign lawyers as A. B. A. guests, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes complained of slipshod U. S. criminal justice. Said he: "The greatest need in this country today is improvement in the administration of justice, especially of the criminal law. . . . Most of our problems could be solved by the selection of competent men."

P: The A. B. A.'s committee on commerce offered a report recommending a major change in the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Its proposals: authority for the Federal Trade Commission to prejudge a questionable trade agreement and grant immunity from criminal prosecution to its parties if the commission finds the agreement within the law. The committee complained that the law's criminal features were so vague that U. S. business is cast into a chronic state of fear and uncertainty.

P: To Elder Statesman Elihu Root went the association's medal for distinguished service in 1930 because of the formula he had evolved for U. S. entry into the World Court (TIME, April 1, 1929). Lawyer Root, 85, gave the A. B. A. his benediction, hoped its strength and wisdom would continue to grow.

Elected A. B. A. president was white-haired, swart-skinned Josiah Marvel of Wilmington, Del. Delaware is famed for three things: its Du Ponts, its whipping post, its accommodating law under which many a great U. S. industry has chosen to incorporate.* Lawyer Marvel was the author of that law. He likes to be known as a Delaware country squire. As the State's Democratic National Committeeman, he is a candidate for the Senatorial nomination at the party's convention this month against Thomas Francis Bayard, onetime Senator.

*Estimated total of U. S. lawyers: 165,300.

*Famed Delaware corporations: Allis-Chalmers, American Radiator, Coca-Cola, Chrysler, General Motors, Texas, Gillette Safety Razor, Pullman, Radio, Standard Oil of California.

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