The Legal
The annual meeting of the New Hamp shire State Bar Association is to be held in the first week of May. The president's address will be delivered by Edwin F. Jones, Esq., of Manchester, N. H., and the annual address by William B. Hornblower, Esq., of New York. The recent annual meeting of the Okla homa State Bar Association was made inter esting by the address on "Conservatism in Legal Procedure" read by Hon. F. W. Lehmann of St. Louis, president of the American Bar Association. Mr. Frank Wells of Okla homa City read a paper devoted to a review of the legislation of the year 1908. Mr. Charles West, Attorney-General of Oklahoma, was delayed in getting to the meeting by a railroad wreck, and was prevented from mak ing his address by business that compelled him to return to Guthrie.
Of the new Taft Cabinet it is notable that six are lawyers, Senator Knox, Mr. Wickersham, Judge Dickinson, Judge Nagel, Mr. Ballinger and even Mr. Hitchcock, who has been ad mitted to the bar. Mr. Taft, in his speech at the University of Pennsylvania on Washing ton's Birthday, said: "In a wide sense the profession of the law is the profession of gov ernment, or, at least, it is the profession in the course of which agencies of the govern ment are always used, and in which the prin ciples applied are those which affect either the relations between individuals or the rela tion between the government and individuals, and all of which are defined by what, for want of a better term, is called 'municipal law.'" The trial of Col. Duncan Cooper, his son Robert Cooper, and John D. Sharp at Nash ville, Tenn., on the charge of killing ex-Senator Edward W. Carmack, has been marked by extraordinary conditions as regards the con stitution of the jury. The law prohibited the drawing for the jury of any one who had talked with a witness to the murder or talked with some one who had talked with the wit ness. The Supreme Court having held that a newspaper printing verbatim testimony be came a witness who had talked to a witness, every one in the county who had read the newspaper testimony became ineligible to sit as a juror. After calling 3019 names to fill twelve places, a jury was at last impaneled, astonishing from the fact not only that none of the dozen has read a newspaper since be fore the killing, but that four of the jurors can neither read nor write, and two others understand English only indifferently
World
Governor Charles N. Haskell, of Okla homa, was indicted by the United States grand jury Feb. 3 for conspiracy to defraud the Government in connection- with the scheduling of Muskogee town site lots. Henry M. Hoyt, Solicitor-General of the Department of Justice, who, it had been rumored, was to be appointed Under Secre tary of State under Mr. Knox, was recently stated to have completed arrangements to go to Philadelphia at the close of the administra tion to enter the private practice of law. Mr. Hoyt was a classmate at Yale of President Taft. Indictments against the New York World and Indianapolis News for alleged libel were returned Feb. 17 by the District of Columbia grand jury. Later, bench warrants were issued for the arrest of the men indicted. The indictments made the Press Publishing Company (the World), its president, Joseph Pulitzer, and Editors Caleb M. Van Hamra and Robert H. Lyman, and Delevan Smith and Charles R. Williams, owners of the Indianapolis News, defendants. The late M. Alcide Darras, founder and editor of the Revue de Droit International PrM of Paris, who died a few months ago at the age of forty-seven, began his literary career by writing a university thesis for Ins doctor's degree on the subject, "De la Repre sentation Judiciaire en Droit Romain." Other early works were a treatise on trade marks, and also one on the subject, "De la PropriAe' Litteraire, Artistique et Industrielle dans les Rapports Internatumaux," a portion of which was later published in his work, "Du Droit des Auteurs et des Artistes dans les Rapports Internationaux." These works were the be ginning of labors of which the foundation of the Revue de Droit International Privi twenty years later was to be the crown. After get ting his doctor's degree he continued to study, in Paris, and wrote steadily, much of his work being anonymously dispersed through the Sages of reference-books and reviews. In is contributions to the Journal de Droit International Privi and the Recueil Sirey, he showed himself a jurist of profound learn ing. He was secretary of the Society of Comparative Legislation in 1889, secretarygeneral of the International Literary Artistic Association in 1892, secretary of the Section of Trade Marks at the Industrial Property Congress in 1889, associate of the Institut de Droit International, and a charter member of the Society for Legislative Studies. He was not only a learned but a prolific writer upon subjects of commercial law and private international law.
