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4 Law Notes (Edward Thompson Co.) 1 (1900-1901)

handle is hein.journals/lawnotes4 and id is 1 raw text is: LAW NOTBS. saw Aon APRIL, 1900. PUBLISHED BY EDWARD THOMPSON COMPANY, NORTHPORT, LONG ISLAND, N. Y. CONTENTS. PAGE PAGE EDITORIAL COMMENT: The Bankruptcy Law Again Law Teaching in England and America .... Law Study by Laymen . Freak Legislation .... The State and the Barber .udges' Salaries . Judicial Slang and Judicial Humor. ........ A Protest against Legal Verse ARTICLES : Old Monopolies and Modern Trusts .. ........ Service of Process under Diffi- culties .. ........ Some Unconsecrated Falla- cies .. ......... Legal Ethics ........ Mrg. John Austin .... Lawyers who Have Refused E cessive Fees .... CASES OF INTEREST REVIEWS: Spanish and Spanish-Ameri- can Legal History . NEWS OF THE PROFESSION . ENGLISH NOTES ........ OBITER DICTA CORRESPONDENCE . THE discussion of the national bankruptcy law and its workings still goes on, and it is remarkable how entirely capable observers differ as to its effect. It has been said that there is a large amount of dissatisfaction with the provisions of the bankruptcy law among merchants. Fraud, it is declared, is not only not repressed but is fostered by the measure in that it keeps open the field of business to men who by fraud fatten upon legitimate commerce. The source of these allegations is too vague. More important, if they are correctly reported, are the views of Judge Addison Brown of the United States District Court for Southern New York. He is credited with saying that the present bankruptcy act is distinctly a law for the debtor, not for the creditor. Since the act went into force about $70,000,000 of debts have been wiped out in New York City alone, and a large part of this vast sum Judge Brown is declared to have said was sworn off by fraud which the court was powerless to prevent. This is a very grave allegation, and we may perhaps question the correctness of the report of Judge Brown's observations. The views of Representative Dolliver of Iowa, whose bill for the repeal of the law is now pending in Congress, were com- mented on in the February number of LAw NOTES. He has recently reaffirmed his opinions in a debate in Chicago on the bankruptcy law when he said: It is one thing to wipe an old slate; it is another to put American business, for all time to come, on the basis that nobody need pay what he owes unless he wants to. It presents a standing invitation to the- young men of the United States, now free from debt and about to embark in business, to plunge into whatever specula- tion they please, with the assurance that their country stands ready to wipe out all their obligations if, at the end of their exploits, they have enough money left to file an application in bankruptcy. Transactions have been going on for nearly two years (in the United States), possible only in prosperous times, which, unless checked by conservative commercial in- fluences, will prepare the way for a universal collapse of private credit. MR. WILLIAM A. PEINDERGAST of New York, Secretary of the National Association of Credit Men, was Mr. Dolliver's opponent in the Chicago debate, and his views differed radically from that gentleman's. He said: This law has had the effect of restricting credit to legitimate lines. The fact that preferences, in any of their devious forms, when made within four months, are wiped out in bankruptcy proceedings, has rendered it imperative that the credit man indulge in no credit gambling, but base his judgment solely on the moral character, the mental capacity, the financial responsibility, of the debtor. Mr. Pendergast seems to voice the sentiment of the leading merchants and business men throughout the country. Their position appears to be well summed up in the following statement of the President of the Milwaukee Credit Men's Association: The national bankruptcy law is a step in the right direction. The credit men certainly do not favor its repeal, as we need a law that is uniform in all the States, but it ought to be changed and modified in many particulars. We do not want to return to the conditions that existed before its passage, when a man could become a bank- rupt in Wisconsin and step across the border of the State and become a full-fledged business man with a stock of goods that his creditors in this State could not touch. Another repre- sentative business man is quoted as saying, While the new law is defective in some ways, the old way was infinitely worse. There is conservatism and common sense in this view. Do not surrender a solid advance, because the present law is defective, but note the defects in actual practice and amend the act. Some of the provisions which are pointed out as un- satisfactory are the provision for a discharge without reference to the percentage of his indebtedness paid by the bankrupt ; the lack of a penal clause which may be applied to a merchant securing a stock of goods within a short time before the date of making an assignment and not able to explain satis- factorily what has become of the goods. Such a penal clause was contained in the present law as presented to Congress, but it was struck out in deference, it is said, to th views of Senator Nelson of Minnesota. IN a recent paper containing the results of observations on the teaching of law at Harvard University, Mr. A. V. Dicey, Vinerian Professor of Law in the University of Oxford, points out the essential difference between the conditions of study for the bar in the United States and England. The profes- sional teaching of English law centres around the Inns of Court in London, and cannot under present conditions be pursued in the uhiversities, where, however, there is admirable instruction in law from the general educational point of view under the direction of such men as Sir Frederick IPollock, Mr. Maitland, and Mr. Dicey himself. Mr. Dicey observes that while this underlying difference must be borne in mind in applying in an English university the results achieved by the Harvard Law School, those results are full of encouragement for all earnest teachers of law. We learn from the experi- ence of Harvard, he says, that, under favorable circum- stances, English law can be taught with unlimited success by the teachers and professors of a university. The emphasis given to this lesson will strike most American readers as curious. For more than half a century in the United States competent professional and practical legal instruction has been APRIL, 1900.1

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