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TRANSACTIONS

OF THE

TENTH ANNUAL MEETING

OF THE

AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION,

HELD IN

Putnam Music Hall,

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK,

AUGUST 17, 18, AND 19, 1887.

Wednesday, August 17, 10 A. M.

C. C. Bonney, of Illinois:

Gentlemen of the American Bar Association, in behalf of the Executive Committee, I ask you to come to order, and listen to the address of your President, Thomas J. Semmes, of Louisiana.

The President of the Association, Thomas J. Semmes, of New Orleans, La., then delivered the opening address. (See Appendix.)

C. C. Bonney:

Mr. President, the death of Judge Poland and the absence in Europe of Mr. Rawle, our Treasurer, and Professor Baldwin, another member of the Executive Committee, left but one elected and one ex officio member of the Executive Committee to attend this present annual meeting. Under our Constitution three courses were open to us. We constitute a legal

quorum for the transaction of business, and we have authority to proceed and fill the vacancies in this Committee, but we have felt unwilling to take either of those courses and have preferred rather to submit to you in the form which we have prepared the matter of filling the Executive Committee for present action. We were unwilling, after his long and faithful service, to treat the office of Professor Baldwin as vacated by his absence in Europe, where he and Mr. Rawle, with our former President, Mr. Phelps, and Mr. Field, Judge Peabody, and perhaps some others, have been in attendance upon the International Law Association. We were unwilling to seem to forestall the action of the Association in reference to the filling of the vacancy created by Judge Poland's death. We invited our President to act with us, as he did on yesterday, and the result was an agreement to submit to you the following proposed amendment to the Constitution:

ART. III.

Strike out all following the words, "Executive Committee," and insert the following: "Which shall consist of the President, the last ex-President, the Secretary, and the Treasurer, all of whom shall be ex officio members, together with three other members to be chosen by the Association, and the President, and in his absence the ex-President, shall be the Chairman of the Committee."

As a member of the Executive Committee, I may say that we have felt that heretofore the Executive Committee has been too permanent a body, and that it ought to have introduced into it some members of the Association who would be changed from year to year, lest there should be too much. tendency on the part of the Committee to act according to set notions. It seemed to us, therefore, that to pursue the usual course of making the President of the body ex officio chairman of the Executive Committee was wise, and that to add to him the retiring President, so that the Executive Committee would

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