Law: A. B. A. Delegates

Let us suppose this hypothetical case:

A judge in Michigan who works part time in a General Motors plant . , . is a member of the United Automobile Workers of America and is interested in the success of the strike. Union lawyers appear before this judge and he grants them a petition directing General Motors officials to bargain collectively with the union. . . . What would General Motors officials do when the injunction was served upon them? First, they would probably laugh and say to the sheriff, “Don’t be silly, that judge holds a union card.” And on sober second thought they would probably get mad and want to do something about such a judicial process.

This fable popped up in the Scripps-Howard Columbus (Ohio) Citizen one day last week while the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates met in Columbus’ Deshler-Wallick Hotel to frame A. B. A. policies. Before the “congress” adjourned, the A. B. A.’s ethics & grievance committee was directed to investigate the action of Circuit Judge Edward D. Black of Flint in enjoining Fisher Body workers from striking, report to the annual A. B. A. convention in September whether ethical canons had been violated because Judge Black owned 3,665 shares of General Motors stock (see p. 17).

Such speed on the part of the A. B. A. on a matter less than a week old was no less surprising than the vote by 150 lawyers-delegates deciding that some of the things they were doing were unconstitutional by A. B. A. laws. Brought to a showdown on a resolution urging the Federal Government to extend civil service to all employes except top Government officials, the House of Delegates voted itself out of order, threw out all other proposals not concerned with law and legal orders. Next day, however, delegates approved a civil service resolution relating to Federal judicial posts.

Despite this plug for merit, the law’s love for the status quo found reflection in a report of the committee on the “increasing number of governmental bureaus and boards.” Declaimed Delaware Delegate James R. Morford: “We must guard in any proposed alteration of our inefficient political bureaucracy against the very real dangers which inhere in a non-political and efficient bureaucracy. One permanent threat to liberty is involved in the future development of civil service.”

On safe grounds where its own constitution was involved the A. B. A. House of Delegates passed resolutions urging:

¶ Appointment of State judges by Governors (instead of by election).

¶ Substitution of regular criminal procedure for a “Code Authority” in any coal legislation the U. S. Congress passes.

¶ A curb on coallegging by making “anyone who knowingly purchases coal sold in violation of the act . . . equally guilty with the seller.”

¶ Extension of the Connally (“hot oil”) Act.

Nominated by the delegates to succeed

President Frederick Harold Stinehfield of Minneapolis when the full A. B. A. convenes in Kansas City in September was Arthur T. Vanderbilt of Newark, N. J.. whose sponsors told the House they had boomed him for U. S. Attorney General to Alf M. Landon last autumn. Now 48, Lawyer Vanderbilt has been teaching law at New York University for 23 years, been Essex County Counsel for 16 years, chairman of the Judicial Council of New Jersey since 1930.

Last week’s gathering at Columbus was the second for the House of Delegates, the first since its organization at Boston last summer (TIME, Sept. 7). Chosen by State and local bar associations, attending legalists hailed the representative nature of the new body, paid no attention to the newly formed National Lawyers Guild.