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The Green Bag

Col. James Chamberlin, who had been lawyer of Nashville, Tenn., ever since the Civil War, in which he served with distinction on the Union side, died there July 26, at the age of seventy-three. A native of Union County, Pa., he was graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1859, and before the War he practised at Lewisburg, Pa. He was a man of highest honor and recognized ability, and had more than once declined to be a candidate for judicial and other honors. Edwin A. Ballard, one of the pioneer mem bers of the Larimer County Bar Association for forty years a practising lawyer in Colorado and Ohio, a former pupil of President Gar field, died at Fort Collins, Colo., July 19, aged seventy-two. He served through the Civil War as private and first lieutenant, and was afterward prosecuting attorney of Allen county, Ohio. He went west in 1878, settling first in Utah. From 1880 to 1892 he practised law in Fort Collins, Colo., and then went to Denver, remaining there about twelve years. Just before 1892 he served one term in the state senate from Larimer county. In his forty years of practice he made and lost a fortune. He had a remarkable memory, and was known among the attorneys there as a walking encyclopedia of the law. His briefs are used as models of diction and form in the Colorado State University Law School. Miscellaneous Seventy young men passed the June bar examinations in Colorado. Eighteen young men successfully passed the state bar examinations held at Portland, Me., recently. The University of Maine has received from Dr. Thomas U. Coe of Bangor a gift of land as a site for a new building for its law school. It is proposed to erect a building similar to the University of North Dakota Law School, which is built of Indiana sandstone and cost about $50,000. The Connecticut Supreme Court made pub lic some new rules on July 20, providing for greater simplicity, directness, and economy in judicial actions by diminishing the practice of entertaining requests for reservations of questions of Taw arising in the course of actions not ready for final judgment. It is the belief of many lawyers that other states might strengthen their jury system by adopting some such provisions as that of the New York statute which requires that a juror must be between twenty-one and seventy years of age, and the owner or husband of the owner of property worth $250, and be able to read and write English. The Georgia senate passed a bill July 14 making it a penal offense to utter any false or defamatory remark about a woman. It

was not adopted without long debate, many senators believing it would impair the right of free speech. Little legislation of importance seems to have been passed in the five months session of the Wisconsin Legislature, and the im portant subjects of industrial insurance, bank ing and water power were left to special recess committees. These committees, it has now been discovered, are without power, having died with the adjournment of the Legislature. Judge Lawlor, who presided at the trial of Patrick Calhoun in San Francisco, says that the courts are powerless to prevent the evil of extraordinarily protracted criminal trials. Referring to a bill to remedy procedure in the federal courts pending in Congress, the Tacoma Ledger expresses the opinion that a greater duty rests upon the states than upon the federal government. Governor Hughes of New York may not think so much of an appointment to the United States Supreme Court bench as he once did, says the Washington Star. "If Governor Hughes continues in politics it will be seven years before he will figure in Presi dential calculations. Mr. Taft, if he lives, will be renominated, and then in the contest for the new Republican leadership Governor Hughes should be a factor." A movement for the organization of a Women's State Bar Association was recently started in Cincinnati, O., when Misses Ella Purcell and H. A. Quinby of Columbus met with Miss Nellie Robinson of Cincinnati, and decided to call a meeting of all the women lawyers in Ohio, at Columbus, this fall. There are twenty-five women lawyers practising in this state. It would be the first organization of the kind in the United States. "It is to the credit of the commissioners of Luzerne county," remarks the Scranton (Pa.) Republican, "that they incline to the con sideration of the jurors and their comfort in the palatial new courthouse. The idea is to provide sleeping quarters with shower baths, good beds and attractive surroundings. It is announced that they will send the old cots and bedding to the county jail, an indication of previous conditions not peculiar, however, to Luzerne county." A committee of the American Bar Associa tion is taking steps toward the preparation of the program for the Conference on Uniform Legislation which is to be held in Washing ton, Jan. 5-7, 1910, and is to be opened with an address by President Taft. The sub committee named to prepare a tentative pro gram is composed of Alton B. Parker, Amasa M. Eaton, Walter L. Fisher, Frederick N. Judson, George W. Kirchwey, Henry Wade Rogers and Walter George Smith. Dr. Charles E. Woodruff, surgeon and