adoption of the plan of the Board, however modified, could not be secured for many years, and that we should bend our efforts to secure within the next two years the substantial reforms embodied in the Joint Committee's plan, and particularly since, if that is done, it may be easier at some future time to secure a form and arrangement of the new provisions more nearly in accord with that devised by the Joint Board.

You will perceive that the position which is recommended by the Committee is a negative one; that is to say, they do not ask for any further action. They approve and have approved, with the qualifications which have been fully stated, the plan proposed by the Board of Statutory Consolidation. Their only recommendation is that the work which has been done by the Joint Committee should not be expressly disapproved by this Association upon the theory that if that can be accomplished it will be a long step towards procedure reform.

With the permission of the Chair I shall reserve any further remarks upon this matter until the discussion has been concluded.

The President:

Gentlemen, is there further discussion?

Adelbert Moot, of Buffalo:

Mr. President, I want to say a little something in appreciation of the report of the Committee and in appreciation. of the report that they made two years ago, and in appreciation of the report of the Joint Legislative Committee, and at the same time to point out the very broad difference between the report that we have just heard and the real situation before the profession.

This is not a new question with me. You sir, Mr. President, my friend, Mr. Fiero, Mr. Elbridge L. Adams and two or three other gentlemen, and myself, as far back as twenty years ago, wrestled with this very subject as members of a Committee of this Association and we presented to this Association a plan for simplifying the practice in this State. From that day to this the subject has been up from time to time before the Association. That report and that plan was part of the matter that was covered by the selection of the Statutory Consolidation Board. The other part of that matter was a report of the Legislative Committee of which Judge Rodenbeck, I think, was chairman, which was worked out along something like the same lines as this Joint Legislative Committee report; and very good work it was too, work on the general subject of statutory consolidation and of simplification in the Code. During all those years. down to 1904, the simplification of the practice, and the consolidation of the statute were considered parts of one general reform necessary in our law. In 1904, when the Board of Statutory Consolidation came into being, one of the very first questions that came up was a question of policy: Should we try to simplify the Code and practice at the same time that we tried to simplify and consolidate the statutes or should we confine our energies first to the consolidation of the statutes. We realized that the inertia of the profession in matters of practice was so great that if we undertook to solve this matter of the simplification of - practice first, or even at the same time that we undertook to consolidate the statutes, probably all our work would go overboard and we never would have it adopted by the Legislature. We therefore early resolved that we would consolidate the statutes first, report such consolidation to the Legislature and let the Legislature deal with the consoli

dation of the statutes, and then if the Legislature thought well of that part of the work, if it wished, we would do what we could to simplify the practice. In the work of consolidating the statutes one of the very first things that came up was how far should we go in taking out of the Code substantive law and putting that law into the various consolidated statutes where it seemed to be more germane to the topic. Now, that was an important step. We all agreed there were too many hundreds of sections in the Code. We looked them over. There were many hundreds of sections of the Code which were purely substantive law that had been stuck in there from time to time, and that ought, we thought, to be taken out and and put into the General Consolidated Laws. But we went at it timidly, I may say, because we knew of this inertia of the profession, and while we took out some hundreds of sections we left in more hundreds of sections of substantive law just for that reason. Everybody knows that White on Corporations is a very serviceable and accurate work on the subject. Mr. White is the gentleman who prepared our Consolidated Corporation Laws for us in the main. Now, one of the things that he did not do when he reported those laws was this, he did not take out the substantive sections of the Code dealing with Corporation Laws.

We spent, as I remember it, about a day in this very building wrestling over that subject, and, as a result of a very careful examination of the matter, we unanimously reached the conclusion that we should propose no change unless we recommended that all sections of the Code dealing with corporations that were substantive law pure and simple should be taken out of the Code and put into corporation law. That was done, and only this morning in con

versation with Mr. White before this session convened, I told him about this. It was the first that he ever knew of our session over it, he said, and he thought it was a good thing that we did it, because he recognized the convenience and the very great help in harmonizing and consolidating our statutes that had been brought about by it. Now, it is along that precise line that our plans for the simplification of practice go to-day. And let me say that Justice Rodenbeck, who has labored in season and out of season, and who has done, as I have often said, more than the rest of the Board put together, both in the consolidating of the laws and in proposing simplifications of practice, has given up a summer's vacation richly earned on the bench to go over the proposed practice act and the rules of court to see what improvement could be made in them, in the line of constructive, or destructive, criticism of the Joint Committee, or of the profession, or of anybody else, and he has reported to the Board, and the Board are now considering the revised report to the Legislature, the substance of which will be that instead of a Practice Act of seventy odd sections we have taken almost bodily the proposed act as drawn by the very able Committee of which Mr. Taft is Chairman which they reported to this Association two years ago as a proposed Practice Act. The rules of court, as a result of constructive and destructive criticism which has been given attention, have dwindled from a few over 400 to 315, and they have also dwindled in volume. Now, is it wise to have a Practice Act of so few sections, and rules of court to govern our practice? It gets right down to this: Shall we still stay in a legislative straight jacket, going always to the Legislature to change our practice, or shall we do as the profession does, and as the country does in the matter of equity practice, and let the court as the Supreme Court

of the United States has done

frame rules governing the

practice? That plan has worked so well that that Court, which framed rules for equity practice, is being asked to frame rules for legal practice along the same lines. Which is the better plan to have the Legislature dealing with practice in detail, many hundreds of sections, with continual amendments every year, or to have a practice act of a very few sections, that are fundamental, and then rules of court. for details which shall be amended from time to time by a convention of judges and lawyers meeting together? That is what the difference in plans amounts to. I say that the latter plan is the better plan; that is, to have a simple practice act as our foundation, and rules of court revised from time to time by a convention of judges and lawyers working together as to the details. Let me give you an illustration. We have a great many sections dealing with eminent domain. What is the law of eminent domain when you get right down to it? Is it anything more than a real property law, providing for the conveyance from the owner to the State, or some part thereof, for compensation that shall be fixed according to law? Isn't that all there is of it? Why should that be put by itself? How many lawyers ever have occasion to use it in their lives? Why, the most of them dont' know where it is or what it is either. Now, what should we do with it? Shouldn't we put all of the provisions with reference to eminent domain into the real property law, where a man who examines a title or a man. who has anything to do with real property will find it ready to his hand as a part of the law? Then when he examines a title, or goes into court, he has with him his real property law, including the eminent domain provisions of it, and he acts accordingly. Take the practice in the Surrogate's Court. We all know that a certain number of lawyers in