Collections

Delayed Justice in New York State

The task still ahead of us is one of interpretation of the data assembled and of devising remedies for the abuses uncovered. The research work was so specialized that the Bench or Bar generally could not join in it, but the task from now on is your task as much as ours and as soon as our report is made available for study, we invite the help and suggestions of all men.

Changes in Treasury Tax Policy

Among the most controversial and vital problems of the coming years are those relating to taxation. Lawyers will further impair their already declining leadership if they fail to bring disinterested and intelligent influence to bear upon the economic and legal questions involved.

The Lawyer; Leader or Mouthpiece?

I have come to regard many of the things about which we complain as symptoms of an underlying weakness in the position of the profession itself, and in its method of work, rather than as causes of weakness. If our associations, by and large, are inanimate, incoherent and unrepresentative, if it be true that our neighbors prefer to trust bankers rather than lawyers to settle their estates, if law makers are taking judicial functions away from lawyer-dominated courts and turning them over to lay tribunals, if misconduct by a few shysters can bring a whole profession into public contempt, should we not look deeper to see what keeps us from effective organization, what weakness makes us subject to invasion, why public opinion judges all lawyers by the worst instead of by the best?

Problems of the Federal Tax Bar

The American Bar Association's Committee on Taxation wisely has called those lawyers engaged in tax practice to meet and consider their common problems. In addition to difficulties which vex the general profession, tax practice presents some of its own. Need for a clearing house for the exchange of views, and a voice to speak for the tax bar is so apparent that I hope you may perfect at least a preliminary organization and perhaps a section for the purpose.

The Bar and the New Deal

The New Deal, as it affects the future of the Bar and the Law Schools, goes beyond the policies of the President and is more than a party slogan or a change of governmental personnel. It is a change in the fundamental relation of the federal government toward the governed, which has come so quickly that we have not recognized its significance.

Big Corporation’s Rule

It is apparent, therefore, that the proposal of the President in addition to producing additional revenue involves a redistribution of the corporation-tax burden by which 95 percent of all corporations obtain some tax relief, and about 5 percent, consisting of the largest corporations, would sustain an additional burden. Such a shifting of the burden would produce desirable results from many standpoints.

Equity in the Administration of Federal Taxes

Of the legal relations upon which the corporate and individual clients must seek advice, none is more vexing than those created by the tax laws of local, state and national governments. Lawyers can no longer remain aloof from the tax problem as one that is trivial, nor can they abandon the problem as an accounting problem, nor can the corporation or family adviser turn it over as an independent and disconnected problem for the specialist. Taxation is not a separate problem but is interwoven with every problem or relationship that involves acquisition or disposition of property.

The Liberty League and the Constitution

Under the sponsorship of the "American Liberty League", James M. Beck lately lectured the Bar, by radio and by pamphlet, on "The Duty of the Lawyer in the Present Crisis". His speech was an indiscriminating attack upon the legal advisers of this Administration, and the duty which he urged upon all lawyers was, "We must defeat the sappers and miners of the New Deal, who are insidiously undermining the very foundations of the Constitution".

Rich Get Richer

As the figures of tax collections have become available, it has become apparent that the present administration inherited in 1933 a tax structure that, in terms of making that burden proportionate to ability to pay, had become out of balance even by the standards adopted during the preceding administration....