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11 Or. St. B. Bull. 1 (1950-1951)

handle is hein.barjournals/osbb0011 and id is 1 raw text is: OREGON STATE BAR BULLETIN VOL. XI. OCTOBER, 1950 No. 1 NEW COMMITTEES CIVIL RIGHTS BILL DELEGATE REPORTS NAMED BY BOARD APPROVED BY GROUP ON ABA CONVENTION Closer attention to committee work by the members of the board of governors is anticipated this year through action by E. K. Oppenheimer, president, in naming A. C. Goodrich, vice-president, Bend, as liaison officer between the board and the commit- tees of the bar and imposing upon him the responsibility of seeing that the committees function and make seasonable reports so that at the next annual meeting the entire bar may have the full benefit of the work done, The appointment of committees was one of the important matters before the board at their meeting in Portland on October 27 and 28. This work tied in with the adop- tion of the budget for the year. The in- creased program of service to the lawyers of the state by the board resulted in the budget committee being required to cut expenses to the bone in order to balance the budget for the year. As was told to the Multnomab Bar asso- ciation at the dinner meeting Friday night, the bar can do little to further continuing legal education, public relations, the annual meeting and other work which the mem- bers of the bar have indicated they are interested in and which they expect the organized bar to promote unless increased income is provided or these activities are made strictly self supporting, or a com- bination of the two. The 1951 budget, published in this issue of the Bulletin, has been balanced at $38,- 343. It is speculative in some respects and will be considerably out of balance if a considerable number of those in practice and those about to finish law school are called for military service. There was considerable discussion at the meeting of the fact that a special commit- tee appointed by the board on bar admis- sions which was supposed to report to the board had instead submitted its findings direct to the supreme court. The board, apparently had no notice of this until it came to their attention through members of the board of bar examiners. President Oppenheimer was authorized to contact this committee at once and ob- tain copies of the recommendations made to the supreme court and circulate this report among members of the board. The hope was expressed that the supreme court would not modify any existing rule or pro- mulgate any new on(. until the board at least knew what its own committee had done. It was understood at the meeting that the report made certain recommendations with reference to pre-legal examinations (Continued on Page 4, Column 1) Portland's civil rights ordinance was ap- proved by a voice vote of the members of the Multnomah Bar association who at- tended a dinner meeting at the Benson hotel on October 27. The vote came during a business session of the association which followed a program featuring the board of governors of the Oregon State Bar. E. K. Oppenheimer, president of the state bar, keynoted the meeting when he declared lawyers may personally disagree but basically and fundamentally they stand for the preservation of constitutional rights and the liberties granted by the bill of rights. Lawyers are on the alert to pre- serve and maintain our judicial system and its autonomy. No other class stands in this enviable position. It is of prime importance-ne- cessity if you please-that the public should understand our position in these re- spects, if nothing else. Lawyers are the champions of democracy and American ideals and we should not hesitate to pro- claim our virtue to the public in this re- spect. His remarks became a rallying point later when the ordinance was under con- sideration. President Oppenheimer called the atten- tion of the more than 200 present, Includ- ing Chief Justice Hall S. Lusk and Justice George Rossman of the supreme court, that the public at large does not always have such a high opinion of the law and of lawyers. He quoted a recent Roper survey as reported in Life magazine as an off-set against any complacency on the part of the lawyers. The Roper survey asked the following question: Rank the order of importance to the community of: public school teachers, clergymen, public officials, merchants and lawyers, Teachers were in first place with a per- centage of 31.3, clergymen in second with 27.1, public officials third with 19.1, mer- chants fourth with 12.8 and lawyers a poor fifth with 9.7. The president outlined some of the pro- grams of the state bar and the necessity of the lawyers keeping up with the times and being willing to adopt progressive steps if they meet the needs. Two matters which he spoke of particularly as having great in- fluence upon the attitude of the public were the delayed calendars and dockets and the length of time that cases are kept under advisement after having been sub- mitted to the court for decision. The inability to get cases tried within a reasonable time and likewise decided, is (Continued on Page 3, Column 1) The 1950 meeting of the American Bar association in Washington, D. C., during the week of September 18 was of outstand- ing importance, F. M. Sercombe, state bar delegate, report to the board of governors of the Oregon bar upon his return. Other official delegates from Oregon were Robert F. Maguire, state delegate, and Sidney Teiser, member of the board of governors. In his report Sercombe called attention to the fact that the 1951 ABA meeting will be held in New York next year during the week of September 17 and recommend- ed that the state bar convention be sched- uled for some other time. The 1950 Oregon bar meeting was held the same week as the ABA convention. In his report Sercombe paid particular attention to the following matters. Various items of action taken by the ABA board of governors during the year were reported to the house and approved. Among these was the appointment of a commission of seven members to cooperate with the special committee of the United States senate to investigate organized crime in interstate commerce headed by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. The commission is to make a study of the need for modernization of the rules of procedure and practice in the field of criminal law, the steps which are being taken to codify criminal codes of procedure, the efforts which are being made to improve the codes so that criminals may not escape prosecu- tion, the adequacy of public defender acts, the methods and practices of sentencing and the tendency on the part of the pro- fession to withdraw from the practice of criminal law. One member of this commis- sion will be a representative from the sec- tion of bar activities and another member will be a representative from the Confer- ence of Bar Association Presidents. The House approved a revision of the ABA membership application blank to re- quire a signed answer to the question 'Are you now or have you been a member of the communist party?' Report was made that the association has an opportunity to acquire a most de- sirable building and grounds for a national headquarters for the American Bar asso- ciation at Des Moines, Iowa, to replace the present inadequate and antiquated head- quarters in Chicago. Appointment of a special committee to investigate the de- sirability of such purchase was authorized. The house recommended that court per- sonnel should be recruited and kept under the merit system, that veterans' prefer- ences in government employment should be restricted, that appeals to the Courts (Continued on Page 7, Column 1)

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