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a commission on which he served and which is headed by former

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Chief Judge Frederick Bloom recently is recommending the

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abolishment of this provision. Judge Sobeloff, as I point

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out on page 1 of the memorandum, writing for the Fourth

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Circuit Court of Appeals, notes that we are meeting in

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convention and that we will consider it and by implication

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suggests that this be removed.

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The reasons for removing it are set forth and there

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are five in number, the major reasons. In the first place,

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the 1851 Convention, when it was first adopted, adopted it

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under a misconception of what the Common Law of England was.

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They adopted it because there was a multitude of different

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procedures with respect to rulings on questions of law among

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the various courts of Maryland and they thought that they

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were providing the type of consistency which England sought

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to provide. Now actually this wasn't the case because --

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I won't go into technicalities, but there was an act known as

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Foxes libel law which changed the law in England in criminal

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libel cases and they thought this was enunciative of the law

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of England. But in any case, whatever the reasons, they

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no longer exist.