Friday, September 28, 2007
Page 7
PERSPECTIVES (Column)
Old State Bar Vanishes, New State Bar Holds Annual Conventions…With 4-Year Hiatus
By ROGER M. GRACE
“An act to create a public corporation to be known as ‘The State Bar of California’ ” passed the Legislature on March 15, 1927, was signed into law on March 31, and took effect July 29. A statewide bar convention was held that year.
…But it wasn’t held by the new State Bar.
The State Bar, in its early months, was like an electrical appliance that hadn’t been plugged in or switched on yet. The California Bar Association, a voluntary organization founded in 1909, remained in existence, for the time being, and held its 18th annual convention from Sept. 15-17 in Coronado. About 450 lawyers participated. American Bar Assn. President Silas Strawn and California Chief Justice William H. Waste were among the speakers.
While there was some sentiment expressed at the convention in favor of continuing the existence of the group, the vote was decisively in favor of simply winding down its affairs and handing over its records to the new bar association. That entity had, after all, come into existence through legislative efforts of the precursor organization which discerned a need for a statewide association of lawyers with mandatory membership—that is, an “integrated bar.”
A 2005 book, “Serving Justice, a History of the Oregon State Bar” by Gordon B. Dodds and Cathy Croghan Alzner, notes:
“The integrated bar movement in the United States was a development of the early twentieth century. In 1914 the Wisconsin Bar Association considered the matter of an all-inclusive and self-governing bar, in 1915 the Nebraska Bar Association discussed the matter of an incorporated bar, and in 1918 the California Bar Association appointed a committee to study the matter.”
In 1922, convention delegates endorsed the concept of an integrated bar and a committee was appointed to draft a bill with that purpose; the next year, delegates voted support for the bill, and efforts persisted until they succeeded.
California was the fifth state to create an integrated bar. The first was North Dakota in 1921, then Idaho, New Mexico, and Alabama. What was thought to be unique with respect to the State Bar of California was that it would to be “self-governing.” (That ended in 1979 with the addition of public members to the Board of Governors.)
An article/editorial in the October, 1927 issue of the State Bar Journal (that publication being one of the assets the California Bar Association would transfer to the State Bar) says:
“This new organization is the creation of the old; it was brought into being by the older organization and is being fostered and nurtured by it to the point of effecting existence. When that existence becomes actual instead of potential, as it will upon Friday, November 18, the parent will be merged into the child, the old into the new, and will go forward upon the road to greater opportunities and accomplishment.”
Nov. 18 was the date set for an organizational meeting of the State Bar. Doing the setting was a five-member commission, headed by the chief justice, which was overseeing the activation of the State Bar, including the registration of members and the balloting for members of the first Board of Governors.
Registration was no simple chore. Notices of the obligation to sign up and send in dues of $3 were sent out…but there was no central registry of persons who had been admitted. Under the State Bar Act, every lawyer in the state automatically became a member of the new official organization on July 29, but was to be divested of membership upon failure to take the required steps.
In the August, 1927, issue of the State Bar Journal, California Bar Association president Thomas Ridgway of Los Angeles says in his “Message From the President”:
“The State Bar Commission has endeavored to make a complete roster. Telephone and business directories and law-lists have been examined, and the services of judges, county clerks and bar associations have been enlisted, in an effort to obtain the name of every lawyer practicing in the State of California. If anyone fails to receive from the Commission a registration card, shortly after August 1st, it will indicate that his name is not upon the register.”
The remedy, the message says, was for the lawyer to submit his name to the State Bar at its San Francisco office.
Safeguards against persons legally ineligible to practice law gaining a place on the roster by merely asserting entitlement were virtually non-existent. Indeed, safeguards had, in general, long been lacking. An abuse against which the Los Angeles Bar Assn. had been railing was the routine admission of supposed out-of-state attorneys on motion, without any effort to ascertain the legitimacy of the purported bar membership elsewhere.
A well-attended banquet—billed at the time as a “Pre-Organization Dinner” and described in recent years by the State Bar as a “Victory Dinner”—took place at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco the night before the organizational meeting.
The Nov. 18 meeting was conducted at the Native Sons’ Hall in San Francisco. Ballots for the Board of Governors were counted, and the governors took office. They elected Joseph J. Webb of San Francisco as the first president. Webb had been a member of the transitional commission appointed by Waste…chosen because, according to him, they had done the most to spur the creation of an integrated bar.
The Board of Governors appointed committees.
The California Bar Association then held a brief meeting. Ridgway announced that the overwhelming desire of the membership, ascertained through a canvassing by mail, was that the funds be turned over to the State Bar. The officers were left to see to that and tie up loose ends.
The first convention of the State Bar took place from Thursday, Oct. 11, to Saturday, the 13th, 1928, at the Hotel Huntington in Pasadena. There were now 10,477 members.
Speakers included Chief Justice William H. Waste, discussing “The Advisability of Giving Finality to the Decisions of the District Courts of Appeal”; Gov. C.C. Young, delivering an address on “The Reorganization of State Government”; Hubert T. Morrow, president of the Los Angeles Bar Assn., talking about “The Bar’s Opportunity Under the State Bar Act,” and Los Angeles attorney Gurney E. Newlin, president of the American Bar Assn. (That’s a stark contrast to this year’s lackluster get-together, with the major speakers being anthropologist Jane Goodall and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who couldn’t pass the State Bar exam.)
Robert M. Fitzgerald of Oakland, a past president of the California Bar Association, was also a speaker. He declared that the new State Bar had accomplished more in its one year of existence that the group he headed had in its nearly two decades. His Oct. 10 address contains this call to action:
“Every State in the Union is watching the progress of the new California bar and if any statute prevents the use of our power to remove the barnacles from the sides of the legal profession, we should fight to change that statute.”
Ridgway was elected at the convention to serve as the second State Bar president.
Controversy permeated the conventions through the years. On Sept. 21, 1933, State Bar President Guy Crump of Los Angeles spoke before the convention in Del Monte, in Monterey County, saying of Superior Court judges:
“[S]ome are good, some are bad, some are learned in the law, some are ignorant of its elementary principles, some are industrious, others indolent, some are regarded strictly by the law and the dictates of conscience, a few are otherwise controlled.
“The trial bench in California, at least in the larger counties, is rapidly deteriorating. In Los Angeles County, for example, we are getting no better fast.”
He advocated a plan under which judges would be appointed from a list promulgated by the chief justice, the presiding justice of the District Court of Appeals in which the appointment would be made, and the state senator from the county, with retention elections every six years.
In 1934, state courts were closed on Thursday, Sept. 22 and the following day to permit judges to attend the convention. More than 5,000 of the state’s 12,000 lawyers were expected to attend.
The 14th annual convention of the State Bar (and 32nd annual statewide bar convention) was held in Yosemite from Sept. 16-20, 1941.
And a feisty convention it was. Among the resolutions passed by the Conference of Delegates was one assailing anti-Semitic remarks...seen as a slap at Charles Lindbergh for recent remarks. Speakers included the attorney general of the United States, the governor, a United States senator, the SEC commissioner, and the president-elect of the American Bar Assn.
Something happened to prevent the staging of the 15th annual convention: World War II.
No convention was held in 1942. A notice in the July-August issue of the State Bar Journal announced that business would be transacted on Sept. 11, and maybe the next day, at the State Bar’s office in Los Angeles on Spring Street, but adds:
“[N]o Annual Meeting in the nature of a Convention will be held this year. The Annual Meeting will be held for the sole purpose of meeting statutory requirements. No program of any kind is being arranged and it is not anticipated that members of the bar generally will desire to attend.”
In other words: don’t show up.
New members of the Board of Governors were sworn in on the evening of Sept. 11 at a meeting of Southern California lawyers at the University Club.
In 1943, a convention was slated for San Francisco, to commence Sept. 16. But in the May-June issue, Los Angeles attorney Frank Belcher announced in his “President’s Message” that event had to be cancelled by the Board of Governors at its June meeting. The column explains:
“This action was regretfully taken and then only because of developments which simply made it impossible to proceed. We were in receipt of a direct request from the Office of Defense Transportation that the Annual Meeting in San Francisco not be held. Railroad transportation has become increasingly difficult to arrange and conferences with railroad representatives demonstrated that to attempt to hold the San Francisco meeting would impose a transportation load which could not be not be absorbed. Difficulties also developed so far as hotel accommodations are concerned. A dinner meeting could only be promised in the event no poultry rationing is imposed between now and convention time. In light of these several developments it appeared not only unpatriotic but impractical to proceed with the plans we had so confidently laid.”
Belcher said that two regional meetings would take place—one in Los Angeles on Aug. 4 and one at the Palace Hotel on Sept. 16. He noted that the combined effect of the two conferences would constitute compliance with the requirement that an “annual meeting” be held. Resolutions which were passed by delegates in Los Angeles were submitted to delegates in San Francisco.
The State Bar again intended to hold a convention in 1944, but cancelled the plans when asked to do so by J.M. Johnson, director of the Office of Defense Transportation. He is quoted in the May-June issue of the State Bar Journal as saying:
“The problems of the State Bar of California, and its desire to hold a convention to settle some of them, is recognized. Nevertheless, I must urgently request that you subordinate those desires to the greater importance of the war effort and the transportation problems incident thereto, and arrange if possible some alternative method of solution.
“Travel conditions on the carriers, instead of improving, are rapidly growing more difficult, and with the approach of impending intensification of the war in Europe, we cannot foresee any immediate likelihood of improvement. Space on trains and buses is needed for military travel and those who must travel on war business. The convergence of large groups of delegates en route to and returning from, conventions, seriously interferes with the handling of necessary traffic.”
Although the published notice specified that the annual meeting would be held, as a formality, at 2 p.m. on Sept. 22 at the State Bar’s office in the Rowen Building in Los Angeles (at 460 S. Spring St.), a three-day meeting actually was held, with officers elected on Sept. 22, and committee reports reviewed the following day.
World War II ended on Aug. 15, 1945—but a convention nonetheless was not held that year. A notice in the September-October State Bar Journal explains:
“Conditions with respect to travel and hotel accommodations prevent the holding of any meeting in the nature of a convention.”
The following year, there was a State Bar convention, as there has been every year since.
The Los Angeles Times covered the goings-on in 1946—but kept referring to it in its stories as the State Bar’s “19th annual convention.” Since the event in 1941 was the 14th annual convention, and none had been held since, this was neither 19th convention, nor would it be an annual convention until it was re-established as such a year hence.
So, we’re now up to the State Bar’s 80th annual meeting and its 76th convention. It’s the 52nd annual convention, with the annual nature restarting in 1946.
This year’s gathering, in light of lame speakers and the lack of burning issues, promises to be a sluggish one…but there will more conventions, and undoubtedly worthwhile and spirited ones.
Copyright 2007, Metropolitan News Company