The Editor's Bag THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIA TION AND PUBLIC OPINION THE American Bar Association shows itself this year more than ever before, perhaps, far in advance of the prevailing popular opinion in matters pertaining to a well ordered court procedure and scientifically framed laws. The stage has definitely been reached where it becomes necessary to educate public opinion before the beneficent undertakings which the Association has in hand are to be successfully carried out. Laymen do not on the whole grasp the situation. They are still in clined to blame the lawyers for the faulty administration of justice and for the baffling intricacy of the statute laws of the country and the case law depend ent upon them. But it is the legislator, rather than the lawyer, who is to blame, or if they happen to be one, the legis lator who forgets that he is a lawyer. The matter is definitely "up to" the legislatures of the states and nation. Were they to act on the deliberate and in some cases many times repeated recommendations of the Association and of the Uniform State Laws Conference there would be a truly tremendous ad vance. The experience of our American democracy has not shown legislatures, on the whole, to be much more enlight ened than the public opinion they rep resent, and hope for progress is founded solely on the prospect of perhaps influ encing the public to demand of its representatives the reforms of procedure
and adoption of the model uniform statutes which the Association is advo cating. The American Bar Association has no agency or department for the dis semination of propaganda correspond ing to an important feature of the organization of the Carnegie Peace Foundation. It is a voluntary associa tion supported by the dues of members and possessing no endowment or sources of income adapted to the magnitude of the work in which it is engaged, and the wonder is that it is able to do this work so well, for the committee reports presented at Milwaukee show this to have been a most fruitful year. The problem of publicity is most difficult to solve, and may be commended to the attention of the Association for earnest consideration. That the movement for the reform of procedure is not making more rapid progress is due primarily to Congress and particularly to Senator Heyburn of Idaho, who availed himself of the courtesy of that body to prevent the passage of the American Bar Association bill providing that cases shall be decided upon the merits without regard to tech nical errors which do not affect the merits, and that the appellate court shall have power to render final judg ment upon the merits without being obliged, as it is under the present sys tem at common law, to order a new trial. The House had passed the bill. Another bill approved by the Asso ciation provides that in case a plaintiff
