Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1911 — ATTORNEYS HEAR PRESIDENT TAFT [ARTICLE]

ATTORNEYS HEAR PRESIDENT TAFT

Executive Addresses American Bar Association. v LITTLE TALK ON ARBITRATION Goes into Subject Which Is His Hobby to Define Conflict Between Himself and Senate Foreign Re- i lations Committee. Boston, Sept. 1. —President Taft talked to the members of the American Bar association about arbitration, reform of legal procedure, higher pay for judges and patent appeals. His address was informal, and he slipped from one subject into another, speaking as one lawyer to another. He motored to Boston through the driving rain and talked for nearly an hour to his lawyer friends. For most of the time he spoke of the things that the lawyers were personally interested in, salaries and questions of legal procedure and when he came to the subject of arbitration he apologized for talking on "his hobby.” He spread before them his views of the issue between himself and the senate committee on foreign relations, arguing as a point at law against the threat of the senate committee on foreign relations to strike from the treaties the provision which leaves it to a joint high commission to decide which questions be submitted to arbitration.... Said he: "I am most anxious that that feature of the treaty should be allowed to remain and I am anxious because I want to make this treaty mean something.” Upon the question of federal judicial salaries of which there has been a great deal of discussion before the American Bar association Mr. Taft said that be was in favor of increasing their salaries wherever opportunity afforded. As to the salaries of the supreme court judges he said: “Of course, the Salaries of the supreme court members ought to be increased. We have got them now up to $12,500, or something like that. They ought to go up to $25,000. A court which exercises such great responsibilities and calls for such ability and learning ought to have its members amply paid so that they need not be dependent on lecturing in law schools and doing other things for the purpose of eking out a salary that only enables them to live.” In concluding his address, Mr. Taft brought a cheer from the lawyers by his words against wild theories of progress. “And now, gentlemen,” he said, “there is another thought that this meeting suggests, and that, is of heartfelt sympathy with the men of 1787 and 1789 —marvelous men—who made the constitution of the United States In these days, when we are all in favor of progress, it is of the highest benefit to the community that we had an instrument made in those days sufficiently elastic to comprehend all needed progress and sufficiently restrictive to keep out wild theories, that if they were tried would inflict injury on the community and would prove to be failures in the end, and to thank God that ve had John Marshall and his associates when the case of Marbury vs. Madison camp up, to decide that the courts are the ultimate tribunal to make the law of the legislature square with the constitution.”