to the study of constitutions and the history and philosophy of government. Specializing in judicature, he has made many contributions on this subject to magazines and in public addresses throughout the country. His argument before a subcommittee of the judiciary committee of the United States Senate, on "the Relation of the Judge and Jury" under the Constitution, was made a public document, and was adopted by the committee of the New York State Bar Association. It is believed to have played a part in defeating a statute proposing to deprive Federal district judges of the power to "sum up the evidence" and to instruct a verdict in proper cases.

Convinced that, without greater uniformity of law, states' rights must be materially and unnecessarily sacrificed in the interest of interstate commerce, and that there could be no uniformity of law in the absence of uniformity of decision and of procedure, he has been ten years engaged in the effort to make both possible.

Mr. Shelton has been appropriately referred to as the "Father of the Conference of Judges." His doctrine is that fixed interstate judicial relations are as necessary and logical and easy of achievement as interstate commercial relations. To this end he conceived the idea of an annual conference of the chief justices of the several state supreme appellate courts and the senior Federal circuit judge of each circuit, or a representative. Although the idea met with universal approval, there was little faith in its consummation. A very able lawyer declared it to be the idle dream of an earnest enthusiast. Starting a campaign before the Republican Club of the city of New York seven years ago, Mr. Shelton wrote and spoke all through the country in its advocacy. The officers of the American Bar Association espoused the cause, and a preliminary conference finally held in Montreal in August, 1913, was well attended. A permanent organization was effected, now known as the "Judicial Section" of the American Bar Association. It is one of the most interesting departments of that great organization. This meeting will, no doubt, take as prominent a place in judicial his

tory as the famous Mount Vernon Conference did in commercial legal history, for the latter led to fixed interstate commerce law.

In 1914 he celebrated the first anniversary of the Montreal Conference of Judges by giving a state dinner at the University Club in Washington, D. C. to those chief justices and Federal circuit judges who participated. There were present many lawyers of national reputation, as well as Mr. Justice McReynolds, Attorney General Gregory, and Solicitor General Davis, who gave the movement the sanction of their personal and official approval. An annual banquet is now a feature of the judicial. conference.

Seeing that there could be no uniformity in procedure in the Federal plan of conforming to state practice and procedure (§ 914, Rev. Stat.); believing. that the courts should be regulated by court rules instead of rigid, unscientific statutes; and that there should be an equable division of power between the legislative and judicial departments,-he organized the present campaign of the American Bar Association, looking to the repeal of all Federal laws regulating procedure, and the enactment of a simple statute vesting in the Federal Supreme Court the same power over the law side that it has always possessed on the equity side of the Federal courts. The adoption of the system of rules proposed to be prepared by the states would bring about uniformity. Besides the American Bar Association and many national, commercial, and civic organizations, over forty state bar associations have indorsed the program. He is chairman of the American Bar Association's committee having this campaign in charge, the other members being ExPresident Taft, Ex-Secretary of War Jacob M. Dickinson, Lawrence Maxwell, of Cincinnati, and Joseph N. Teal, of Oregon.

In the interest of an elastic Federal judicial system he advocates power in the Supreme Court to detail both circuit. and district judges to duties in any circuit or district in order to prevent congestion of any docket occasioned by an increase of litigation or troubles person

al to the local judge. "In perfecting judicature the prime thought should be the interest of commerce, to serve which the courts were created. Local traditions and customs and the personal comfort of judges must give way to a business-like administration of justice."

He conceived the idea of a "judicial court of inquiry" as a means of forestalling the sporadic demand for the recall of judges and a recurrent opposition to life tenure, as well as a splendid preventive remedy.

"Impeachment," said he, "as important as is

the virile maintenance of the present constitutional provision, should not be the only way of bringing a life tenure judge before the bar of public opinion. It is too often the case that the layman through ignorance of the law, and the lawyer through indifference or fear, has reached the conclusion that a life tenure judge

is out of reach of the man without influence and means. This is because of the lengthy and expensive dual constitutional scheme. Resentment and opposition to life tenure and the incentive to recall were obvious results. A judicial court of inquiry, the prototype of which may be found in military law, offers hope of a solution. A judge himself may request the court, or when, in the opinion of the chief justice sufficient cause is shown, the court could be convened. The personnel should be such that no member could possibly profit by its finding, and it should represent the different grand divisions of the country. Charges and specifications should be prescribed in advance, so as to prevent surprises, but the entire fitness of the man to be a judge should be examined. The usefulness of a judge is destroyed long before he sinks to the depths of high crimes and misdemeanors. Before such a court there could be defined and considered the trinity of evils that destroy the usefulness of judges,-corruption, ignorance, and subserviency, as well as inefficiency. This court could not impeach, but the practical result would be the same. But if nothing else were accomplished, the effect would bring to the great body of the people the consoling and peaceful thought that an improper judge was speedily within their reach. The expense of the court would be negligible, its composition

Five years ago he commenced a campaign to abolish the common-law pleading, for all past time in vogue in Virginia, and was chairman of the State Bar Association's committee. After encountering many obstacles and personally financing the campaign, the last legislature unanimously adopted the entire program of court rules. Virginia's action will, no doubt, exercise a potent influence in other states.

He is a life-long Democrat in politics, but a conservative progressive in all governmental relations. He is an unyielding opponent of free silver and the recall of judges and judicial decisions. He believes in a representative government as defined by Montesquieu, and takes no stock in social democracy. He studied the Constitution under John Randolph. Tucker at the time that great scholar and apostle of states' rights was writing his book on the subject, and is a contemporary of Solicitor General Davis and Secretary of War Baker at Washington and Lee University.

Mr. Shelton is forty-four years old and a bachelor. He is now engaged upon a book on the subject of American judicature, made up of a revision of his addresses and magazine articles, which will go to press in the fall.

T

HE election of Roscoe Pound of the office of dean of the Harvard Law School brings to the head of that important institution a man of unusual equipment and varied experience. As a practitioner and as a judge he has had a part in the actual application of the law under present-day conditions. As a teacher he has made a careful analysis of its principles, and as a writer he has made notable contributions to legal literature. It may be questioned whether any other member of the American bar is exerting so strong an influence upon the shaping of American law and the moulding of opinion upon legal subjects, especially among lawyers, as is the new dean. It is a matter of congratulation, not only to the circle immediately concerned but to all who are interested in the development of the law, that the commanding post of dean of the Harvard Law School should be conferred upon a man who has touched the subject at so many points, and who has demonstrated that he possesses an exceptionally constructive mind.

Roscoe Pound was born at Lincoln, Nebraska, October 27, 1870. He was prepared for college by his mother, and was graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1888. After a year at the Harvard Law School he was admitted in 1890 to the bar of Nebraska, and practised at Lincoln until 1907, except during the years 1901-03 when he was commissioner of appeals of the supreme court of Nebraska. From 1899 to 1903 he was assistant professor of law in the University of Nebraska, and from 1903 to 1907 he was dean of the Law School. From 1904 to 1907 he was the Nebraska Commissioner on Uniform State laws.

From 1907 to 1909 he was professor of law in Northwestern University, and in 1909-10 he held a similar post in the law school of the University of Chicago. In 1910 he became a member of the faculty of the Harvard Law School, first as Story professor of law, and since 1913 as Carter professor of jurisprudence. In February, 1916, he was elected dean of the Law School. Throughout these years of activity as a practitioner and teacher he has been a voluminous contributor to the legal periodicals. To rehearse even the titles of his numerous articles would require more space than is available.

In the midst of this busy career as a lawyer, Mr. Pound has found time for extensive study in the natural sciences, which has brought him recognition as an eminent botanist. eminent botanist. From 1892 to 1903 he was director of the Botanical Survey of Nebraska, and with Dr. F. E. Clements he has published the Phytogeography of Nebraska, as well as many monographs and articles in European and American botanical journals.

The outward events of Mr. Pound's life and the record of the contributions which he has made to legal and scientific literature are of less interest in connection with the new duties which he is about to assume than are the principles which in his judgment should govern the development of the law in the immediate future, and which because of his advocacy are likely to play an important part in the training of the students in the Harvard Law School while he remains at its head. Without going too far into details, one or two general statements may be made.

Mr. Pound is more than a lawyer. He is a jurist. This necessitates a comparative study of the legal ideas of many peoples who have attempted to solve sim

of

ilar legal problems by different methods. Too often scholars of great ability, who were profoundly versed in the history and doctrines of the common law, have taken a certain pride in their ignorance of other legal systems. From this smug self-sufficiency Mr. Pound is entirely free. Nothing is more characteristic of his writings upon legal subjects than the wide use which he makes of the thoughts and experiences people living under other legal systems. While he is not likely to lose sight of the fact that the object of the Law School is to train men in the common law, we may expect expect that under his guidance other legal systems, particularly the Roman, will not be so completely ignored as they have been heretofore. A second general observation which may be made as to Mr. Pound's

outlook

ing this new element is going on, and is beginning to go on quite as much through judicial decision as through legislation.

Socialization of our legal tradi

tion is as inevitable as were the successive liberalizations in the past by equity, by the law merchant and by legislative re

form. . . . An age that promises to rival the age of Coke and to surpass the age of Mansfield as a constructive epoch in legal history invites to labor along new lines." Το many disciples of

the common law Mr. Pound's criticisms of that system, and his insistence upon the necessity of adapting the law to the social requirements of the time may savor of a dangerous radicalism. Such persons may look with alarm upon his appointment to the most important post in the American system of legal education. If so, their fears will be largely allayed by a passage in an address which Mr. Pound delivered in 1912: .

upon the law is his appreciation of the fact that the common law is now going through a period of transition quite comparable in importance with those associated with the rise of equity and the absorption of the law merchant and the legislative activity of the nineteenth century. Of this movement in the law, Mr. Pound says: "Its watchword is satisfaction of human wants, and it seems to put as the end of law the satisfaction of as many human demands as we can with the least sacrifice of other demands. This new stage of legal development may be called the socialization of law." In another place he says: "The law will absorb the new economics and the new social science, and will be made over thereby. Indeed, the process of absorb

"Let me make it clear that I do not urge that we overhaul our law-school curricula overnight. Nor do I urge that we add new courses to our curricula, already overburdened for the time allowed. I would urge rather a progress in our thinking, and thence in time in our teaching; a study of system of the law as a whole, and a fitting of the principles established by enacted law into the system; a study of the relations of the traditional and the imperative elements of law and working out of better doctrines with respect thereto, and of theories more in accord with the conditions of a period of legislation and the demands of social

progress; and finally, a study of the principles and policy of modern law-making, of the purposes and ends of law to-day as a means of social progress—all these in the same spirit and with the same zeal wherewith we have studied the principles of the common law, discovered the spirit of our legal tradition and wrought system in particular departments of the common law in the past. When we have done this studying and have achieved results along these lines in the daily battle of wits in the classroom with respect to our courses as they now stand, we may be ready to add new courses or to rearrange curricula."

Mr. Pound's appointment as Dean of the Harvard Law School is ample assurance that the men who resort to that institution for instruction will have their thoughts directed to the new demands which society is making upon the law and the methods by which those demands can be satisfied.

Death of Pioneer Jurist.

L. B. Nash, 78 years old and for seventeen years a resident of Spokane, died at his home on May 25 of abdominal trouble. Five of his six children were at his bedside. He located in Walla Walla in 1873, in Seattle in 1876 and in Spokane in 1879. He was judge of the supreme court of the territory of Washington from 1888 until the state was admitted to the Union. According to friends he was the oldest practising attorney in point of time in Washington.

Decease of Prominent New Jersey
Lawyer.

Albert Asa Wilcox, who was law partner of the late Vice-President Garret A. Hobart, and president of the Passaic Print Works, of Passaic and New York, died on Sunday night at his home, 387 12th Avenue, Paterson, aged fiftyfive years. He studied law in the office of Vice-President Hobart, and became his partner when he was admitted to the bar. The partnership continued until Mr. Hobart died in 1899.

Mr. Wilcox, who was born in New York, was one of the most widely known

members of the Passaic County Bar Association. He took an active part in all civic reform movements in Paterson, and served six years on the Park Commission. He was a charter member of the Hamilton Club, also a member of the Arcola Country Club, the Union League of New York, and a captain of the old Paterson Light Guard, under the late Gen. Joseph W. Congdon. Mr. Wilcox is survived by his wife and one daughter.

Able Seattle Lawyer Suddenly

Stricken.

John Kelleher, a member of the law firm of Wright, Kelleher & Allen, and one of the most highly regarded members of the Seattle Bar Association, died on May 16.

He was operated upon at the hospital for appendicitis where he was taken as soon as he fell ill. His family was at the bedside when the end came.

News of Mr. Kelleher's death created the most profound grief among members of the King county bench and bar Tuesday, and judges and attorneys were outspoken in their regret at his passing. Due to his insistent attempts at self-effacement and avoidance of public attention, Mr. Kelleher, though a brilliant attorney, was known better by members of his profession than by the community. generally.

Mr. Kelleher was born January 8, 1864, near Fenton, Livingston county, Mich. He graduated from the law class of the University of Michigan in 1891, and came to Seattle a few weeks after graduation, being admitted to practice in King county the same year. În 1899 he formed a partnership with George E. Wright, under the name of Wright & Kelleher, which firm later changed to Wright, Kelleher & & Caldwell, and changed this year to Wright, Kelleher & Allen, when Corporation Counsel Hugh M. Caldwell left the firm.

"Mr. Kelleher occupied an almost unique position in the esteem of attorneys in this state," said Judge Dykeman. "During the fourteen years I have known him I have never heard a man speak an ill word of him."