A. B. A. & Federalization

With a money-interest in crime, most U. S. criminal lawyers bitterly oppose any legal reforms which might reduce their clients' chances to keep out of prison. Few of these criminal lawyers belong to bar associations. Nevertheless bar association members often become, for other reasons, the crook-defenders' allies in fighting major changes of the criminal code. Where the criminal lawyer is thinking of his bread & butter, his more respectable and conservative colleague is think- ing of the Constitution. Last week the American Bar Association's 56th annual convention at Grand Rapids was thrown into a professional turmoil by a U. S. Assistant Attorney General who bluntly proposed that constitutional guarantees be suspended, all local police be federalized and all technicalities be dropped in a national war against criminals.

The proposer of this plan was Pat Malloy, dark, thick-set Oklahoman. He was born at Salix, Iowa, 48 years ago. When he was 14, a cyclone killed his mother, father, sister, two brothers. As a Notre Dame graduate he went to Tulsa, served two terms as county prosecutor, once had a murder conviction set aside by a judge who ruled that "the prosecutor's closing argument was so eloquent as to have carried the jury beyond justice." For 20 years before his appointment to the Department of Justice in charge of criminal cases, Pat Malloy busied himself profitably in the oil industry.

Appearing at Grand Rapids on his own invitation. Assistant Attorney General Malloy startled the assembled lawyers thus:

"The suppression of flagrant, fundamental crime is an important part of the New Deal. . . . What have I to say by way of practical suggestion? Apprehend the kidnappers, catch the racketeers and this reign of terrorism will cease. How? Federalize the police forces of America! Every U. S. marshal, every State and county prosecuting attorney, every sheriff and his deputy, every State police officer would hold a commission from the Federal Government and be a unit under one directing head. . . . The militia of every State stands behind this federalized force. It would be essential that the direction of this plan be centralized under one head, the Attorney General.

"Those clauses of the Constitution that would make the plan unlawful should be suspended and the Constitution made responsive to the demands of its creation, the preservation of national welfare. . . . A kidnapping and racketeering statute, with appropriate means of enforcement, must and shall be the most popular statute on the books. A plan to wipe out these forms of fundamental crime is one of the chief objectives of Attorney General Homer Cummings. . . ."

A. B. A. members gasped at what they took to be the Department of Justice's full-fledged plan to combat crime. From the floor rose angry cries: ''Answer him! Unconstitutional! States' rights! Answer him!"

U. S. Circuit Judge Parker of North Carolina whose nomination to the Su- preme Court in 1930 the Senate rejected, solemnly warned that the Federal courts would stubbornly protect the States in the enforcement of their own criminal laws. Exclaimed Dean Justice Miller of Duke Law School: "When the official steps outside the law and the courts he provides the criminal with his greatest protection and defense."

The A. B. A. hubbub was not stilled until next day when Attorney General Cummings arrived in Grand Rapids to speak for himself. Leaving his enthusiastic assistant in the lurch, he denied he advocated a Federal constabulary, explained he wanted co-operation between U. S. and local police only ''upon a basis of mutual helpfulness," insisted his plan, when ready, would be soundly constitutional.

Nevertheless the New Deal remained a prime topic of conversation at the A. B. A. Convention. In corridor talk members told one another that the question of NRA's constitutionality, to say nothing of its interpretations and adjustments, would supply the profession with plentiful new business. President Clarence Eugene Martin espied in new Federal laws "a deliberate plan to destroy the Republic and substitute a social democracy." Chairman Louis Caldwell of the Committee on Administrative Law warned that the "Government may not be able to turn back from the present emergency program in two years," advised his colleagues to prepare for a major change in judicial machinery. Most outspoken critic of NRA was Nevada's democratic Senator McCarran who cried: "Experiments are too costly when they strike at a principle which secures individual liberty."

The A. B. A. also:

P: Adopted a resolution opposing the Child Labor Amendment on the theory that it would nationalize the youth of the land.

P: . Heard a prediction by U. S. Circuit Judge Manton that the World Court would some day offer the profession a new and lucrative field of practice when international disputes between individuals were settled there.

P: Elected Earle Wood Evans of Wichita, Kan. as its next president.

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