TRANSACTIONS OF THE SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING

OF THE

AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION,

HELD IN

PUTNAM HALL, SARATOGA SPRINGS, N. Y.,

August 20, 21, and 22, 1884.

Wednesday, August 20, 10.30 A. M.

Luke P. Poland, of Vermont, Chairman of the Executive Committee, called the meeting to order, and said:

The first business of this first session of our Seventh Annual Meeting, will be the Annual Address by the President of the Association. I have the pleasure of presenting to you Cortlandt Parker, of New Jersey, President of the Association.

The President then delivered his Annual Address. (See Appendix.)

Upon the conclusion of the Address, the President said: The first business in order is the nomination and election of members.

Luke P. Poland, on behalf of the General Council, presented several names for membership, all of whom were duly elected.

(See List of Members Elected, at the end of the Minutes of Proceedings.)

The President:

The next business in order is the election of the General Council.

After a recess of fifteen minutes the names of the states

were called by the Secretary, and the General Council was elected.

(See List of Officers in the Appendix.)

The Secretary then read his Report, as follows:

The number of members on the roll in the year before last was 581. In the Sixth Annual Report are the names of 636 members, being a gain of 55.

There are three states unrepresented; Colorado, Nevada, and California.

In the work of last year, several subjects were referred to committees, as follows: 1st, A resolution of John M. Thomas, with reference to the preparation of summaries of the judicial systems of the respective states, was referred to the Committee on Judicial Administration and Remedial Procedure; 2d, the report of the Committee of the Philadelphia Law Association relating to delays in the Supreme Court of the United States, was referred to the same Committee; 3d, the paper read by Seymour D. Thompson on Abuses of the Writ of Habeas Corpus, was referred to the Committee on Jurisprudence and Law Reform.

To the Executive Committee was referred the question of the place of meeting for this year, and that committee directed me to send out circulars, to take a vote of the members of the Association on that subject. A memorandum of those votes appears on page 349 of the last Annual Report. Without reading it, I will simply state that the result of the whole is an exact balance between this place and any other; that is to say, that 221 voted for Saratoga, without change, and the same number of votes precisely were for either Chicago or a change. The balance hangs even, so that the Executive Committee had no other duty to perform than to select Saratoga as a place of meeting until they should

have a better opportunity of ascertaining the will of members of this Association.

A great many applications are made to me on the subject of membership. As we have a Constitution, I uniformly refer all members to that. I have nothing to do with that question, but I may be pardoned for reading the article and asking members to attend particularly to it, since some questions occasionally arise on that point. Article IV. of the Constitution reads as follows: (Reads same.) Gentlemen who wish to nominate members will please write the names on a piece of paper, and procure the signatures of the Local Council, and hand them to the Chairman of the General Council.

A by-law was adopted last year in regard to the duties of the secretary and the chairman of the Executive Committee, providing for an arrangement by a system of exchanges of our Transactions with other Bar Associations. The Chairman of the Committee has had some communications with the Smithsonian Institute, and we hope to accomplish that object.

I have only to refer to my duties as one of the Obituary Committee, and will particularly request the Vice-President for each State to afford me proper materials for printing suitable notices for any of our members who have died during the last year.

On motion of Judge Poland, the report of the Secretary was accepted.

The President said:

The next business in order is the report of the Executive Committee.

Luke P. Poland, of Vermont:

I think it has never been required that any formal report should be made by the Executive Committee. The active

transactions are pretty much embraced in the report of the Secretary and the Treasurer, and what we do and agree upon is developed in the programme that you have before you. The various processes and modes by which we arrive at certain ends would not be interesting to hear.

The President announced the appointment of the Committee on Publications, viz.: Alexander R. Lawton, of Georgia; Francis Rawle, of Pennsylvania; Andrew Allison,* of Tennessee; Charles A. Peabody, of New York; and Garret D. W. Vroom, of New Jersey.

Skipwith Wilmer, of Maryland, moved that so much of the President's address as referred to a change in the form of our discussions at subsequent meetings be referred to the Executive Committee, with the request that they incorporate in the programme for the next annual meeting the plan suggested by the President.

After brief debate, Mr. Wilmer modified his motion so as to read thus: That the Executive Committee be requested to consider whether the recommendations of the President cannot be profitably incorporated in the programme for the Annual Meeting of next year.

The matter was then, on motion, postponed until Thursday morning.

Luke P. Poland, Chairman of the Executive Committee: Before we adjourn, it is necessary that a committee should be appointed to audit the Treasurer's accounts, and I would name Mr. Wing, of Vermont, and Mr. Knott, of Maryland. On motion, the Association then adjourned until 8 o'clock, P. M.

* Mr. Allison, having read a paper at this meeting, declined to act on this committee; and the President afterwards appointed H. C. Semple, of Alabama, in his place.