Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 24.pdf/509

 A Hypothetical Question BY A CONTRIBUTOR WHO PREFERS ANONYMITY DOCTOR, assume that this defendant here Had lived like any other normal boy For twenty years and nothing queer Had shown itself. He found his greatest joy In baseball, hunting, fishing and the like, Until one moonlight night he rowed a girl Across the lake. Her father's name is Mike. Her hair is red and innocent of curl. Her nose is freckled like a turkey's egg And pug to boot. Her figure we dismiss With one remark — 'twas like a young beer keg. And then he took to writing verse like this. Now in the light of modern theory, Could moonshine have brought on such lunacy?

Meetings of the American Bar Association and Affiliated Bodies THE thirty-fifth annual meeting of the American Bar Association was held at Milwaukee, Wis., Aug. 27-29. Governor Francis E. McGovern of Wis consin made the address of welcome, in which he spoke of the popular dissatis faction with the tendency of courts of law to subordinate the merits of a case to technicalities of procedure, and with what he termed judicial usurpation of legislative power, particularly in ques tions of the constitutionality of sorid legislation. He also maintained that the recall of decisions was not revolu tionary. MR. GREGORY'S ADDRESS

Stephen S. Gregory of Chicago, president of the Association, discussed the most important developments of

federal and state statute law. He said that this is an era of political change. "If I may venture," he continued, "to interpret this wonderful awakening I should say it was inspired by the pro found conviction that what the framers of our institutions, state and national, sought, the rule of the people, has not been achieved; and its aim and high purposes are not to destroy these insti tutions, but so to recreate and recon stitute them as to restore to the hands of the people what seems in a measure to have been lost the actual control of government and its agencies." Mr. Gregory declared that the most significant action of the last session of Congress was perhaps the adoption of a joint resolution proposing to the states an amendment to the Constitu-