"This Transcends . . ."

Lawyers by the thousands--4,500 of them--descended on St. Louis last week for the 84th annual convention of the American Bar Association. As men who deal in words, they found much to talk about. They held some 200 separate meetings in a dozen hotels, divided their efforts between 20 committees and 18 study sections. The principles they live and work by may have been laid down long ago, but their problems seem only to increase. Some of them:

Administration of Justice. Rarely have the mills of U.S. justice been so clogged. In federal district courts, 6,200 cases have been pending for at least three years; in state courts it now takes about a year for the average case to be heard; it is not uncommon for personal-injury cases to linger on dockets for five years. Chief

Justice Laurance Hyde of the Missouri Supreme Court pleaded that each state give its highest judge sweeping power to shift judges where they are needed, lay down tough rules aimed at speeding procedure. Computers were demonstrated that could store up all relevant precedents in a given field of law, spill out the information at 600 lines a minute, saving not only countless hours but what one lawyer termed "thousands of dollars in salaries for law clerks and secretaries." New York's Democratic Representative Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, urged a federal system of public defenders to "reaffirm to the world that all our citizens, regardless of their power, poverty or color, are afforded the equal protection of our laws."

Judicial Appointments. Several speakers pointed out that never has a President had such an opportunity as John Kennedy to break the patronage practice that equates judges with postmasters. Kennedy now has the power to name 106 new federal judges, more than one-fourth of all the judges in an expanded federal system. Said the A.B.A.'s federal judiciary committee chairman, Bernard Segal: "The quality of justice which will be administered in our courts during the generation ahead will be determined to a large extent by the kind of judicial appointments President Kennedy makes. Politics should not bar a lawyer from appointment." So far, President Kennedy has sent through only 21 names--three of them Republican holdovers recommended by President Eisenhower, the rest Democrats. The A.B.A.'s Section of Judicial Administration proposed a nationwide reform whereby each Governor would choose state judges from a list of three lawyers submitted by a citizens' committee. Each judge would then face election after three years, again ten years later.

World Law. The A.B.A. had already affirmed the principle of extending the rule of law world-wide as man's best hope for peace but only after bitter argument about how much surrender of U.S. sovereignty was required. Last week there seemed little dissent from the idea. In his keynote speech, the association's outgoing president, Whitney North Seymour, said flatly: "Most of us realize that anything like a durable peace will require increased reliance on international law and institu tions to apply it. Our Committee on World Peace Through Law is no egghead concept, no public relations invention. It presses toward a basic goal always close to the hearts of all those who see increased respect for the reliance on law as the only sure way to a peaceful world."

Winding up its business, the association elevated a 14-hour-a-day small-town lawyer, John C. Satterfield, 57, of Yazoo City. Miss. (pop. 12,500), to its presidency. A third-generation attorney and state legislator at 23, Satterfield is the first Mississippian ever to head the A.B.A. Said he last week: "My most important mission will be to propagate world peace through law. This transcends any of our domestic problems."

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