The Legal World A hostile conclusion has been reached in England by the Council of the Law Society, on the proposal that the County Courts should be made branches of the High Court of Jus tice. The London Law Journal is of the opinion that this decision does not represent the views of the profession as a whole, which favors the amalgation as a beneficial reform.
A bill to establish a United States Court of Patent Appeals was favorably reported to Congress from the House Judiciary Com mittee Feb. 13 by Representative Tirrell of Massachusetts. It provides for a court of five members to sit in Washington, the chief justice to be appointed by the President and the four associates to be designated from among the judges of the federal, circuit and district courts by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. This measure has been urged by the American Bar Association and manufacturing associa tions for ten years.
Hon. Carroll D. Wright, for a score of years United States Labor Commissioner, a statis tician of world-wide reputation, and for sev eral years president of Clark College, in Worcester, Mass., died February 20. Mr. Wright's legal career was overshadowed by the public offices which he held. In October, 1865, at the age of twenty-five, he was ad mitted to the bar of Massachusetts, and prac tised for several years until elected chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1873. He made a specialty of patent law and acquired a practice worth approximately $10,000 a year. After entering upon the census work to which his life was largely de voted, and gaining eminence as a statistician and some fame as an economist he gave no more of his time to the practice of Bis pro fession. His literary work was practically confined to statistical and economic subjects.
In memory of her father, the late Franklin B. Gowen of Philadelphia, an eminent lawyer and president of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, Mrs. Esther Gowen Hood has given the University of Pennsylvania $100,000 to establish graduate fellowships in the Depart ment of Law. The work of the holders of the fellowships is to be prescribed by and exe cuted under the immediate supervision of the Law Faculty. The amount of the income payable to each Fellow is left entirely to the discretion of the University. This gift enables the University from year to year to select three or more of the brighter graduates of the School; remove them from the necessity of immediately taking up the practice of law, and give them the opportunity to make a worthy contribution to legal knowledge and the best preparation for the work of the pro fession.
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Speaking to Oxford undergraduates intend ing to enter the legal profession, the president of Magdalen College referred recently to the excellent effect of the Rhodes Scholarships, remarking that the Law School at Oxford was becoming an imperial school of law. The four South African Colonies, through a joint national convention, have put forward the draft of a Constitution which is to be considered by the separate Parliaments and finally submitted to the British Parliament for ratification. The bill contains some re markable provisions. The Newfoundland fisheries treaty, signed at Washington Jan. 27, goes to The Hague for adjudication on disputed points. America will be represented there by a formidable array of counsel. The court of arbitration is to consist of five members, of whom Judge George Gray of Delaware may be one. Former President William Ramsey of the German National Bank of Pittsburgh, who was charged with having bribed members of the City Council to have the bank made one of the city depositories, was found guilty Feb. 18 on the specific count of giving Councilman Klein $17,500 for that purpose. Klein has given the authorities a confession on the basis of which a number of millionaires and political leaders have been summoned before the grand jury. In excluding from evidence an alleged confession of burglary by a boy, Feb. 23, Judge Foster of the Court of General Sessions in New York characterized the "third degree," or police "sweating" process, as barbarous: "This 'third degree is a dangerous thing. It borders on the Spanish inquisition. I do not say that this is a fact, but there is that feeling and impression and public policy re quires, of course, that no one ought to be forced to give testimony against himself."
Sir Gorell Barnes, who lately resigned from the bench of the High Court and on Feb. 16 took his seat in the House of Lords as Baron Gorell of Brampton, declared recently at Liverpool that the amalgamation of the two branches of the legal profession in America had serious drawbacks, longer and more costly trials resulting from the fact that the men engaged in them were not in touch with each other. In England, it was possible generally to command the services of men particularly acquainted with a particular branch of work before a particular judge, whose touch with one another and with the judge was such that he did not believe that in any country in the world cases were so easily tried and handled as in England.
