This we hope will be a rather strict
standard to be applied by the President. It
would be very hard not to give him any
discretion thereon. On the other hand, we
are sympathetic with the President's view,
and I think the view of most of us, that
not a great deal of discretion be vested in
him in this manner. I would say we all
agree that the practice we hope will prevail
under this rule should not be as liberal per-
haps as the practice which has prevailed
in the General Assembly.
Nevertheless, ultimately it is a standard
administered judicially, in the words of a
friend of mine who used to be in the labor
movement, if it is a standard that is firm
but flexible. To give you a few hypotheticals,
we heard of a few announcements of ab-
sence of delegates because of the birth of a
child. I suppose the language could be read
not to encompass that but surely it could
be read otherwise, that the arrival of the
child was an event beyond his control, and
unless the Convention runs longer than nine
months, we really will not have to face up
to a second category.
DELEGATE GALLAGHER: Mr. Presi-
dent, a point of inquiry.
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Gallagher.
DELEGATE GALLAGHER: Suppose
the delegate is the mother.
DELEGATE SCANLAN: A priori. She
is excused. There are other hypotheticals
that come to mind. Lawyers in this State
who have trials pending hopefully have
been excused; their cases have been post-
poned, pursuant to the request of the Chief
Judge of the Court of Appeals, so there-
fore there should not be too many instances
of that arising. However, it is possible a
man would have a case before a federal
agency and for one reason or another it
was absolutely impossible to postpone it or
the client would only go on with him as
his attorney. Again it is a case with a little
discretion perhaps the man could be ex-
cused.
Another example, for instance, these are
all hypotheticals, but I give them only to
give some idea of the Committee's feelings.
A man cannot be running back to attend
to his business but perhaps on an important
day the bookkeeper had a heart attack. The
payroll had to be gotten out that day. Obvi-
ously this would be somewhat beyond his
control. I would think in a case like that
the excuse would be granted. After all,
every legislative body, and this a legisla-
tive body, has the power to determine
whether or not a member is excused from |
attendance at one of the sessions. We agree
that a Convention is different from the
General Assembly because this is once in a
hundred years. We have very important
business and very limited time to do it.
Fortunately, there are no slackers here.
I for one am confident the job will be
done, and that all will do their fair share,
but we have elected fairly strict standards.
The question arose as to whether or not
if a man, or several of the delegates, were
sent by their chairman as a subcommittee
to, say, New York, to get information rela-
tive to the work of their subcommittee,
would they be entitled to the $25.00 a day.
Certainly they would, in your committee's
views and if the expenditure was greater
than $25.00, I think they would be entitled
to the difference to supplement the differ-
ence between the $25.00 to which they are
entitled, and the actual amount of expenses
that they may have incurred on the busi-
ness of the Convention. So in the end, we
have a strict standard. We hope it will be
applied in a manner that will be satis-
factory, just as Justice Holmes put it in
another context, there has to be room for
play in the joints. One is always confronted
with the inadequacy of language and the
difficulty of anticipating all the hypothet-
icals that could occur. We are somewhat
bolstered by the informal opinion of the
attorney general that the rules are within
the power of the Convention and satisfy
sufficiently from a legal point of view. There
might have been other ways to do it, other
standards that would accomplish the same
result, but we believe this one, administered
with common sense, and we know the Presi-
dent possesses that, will suffice to get us
through the three- or four-month period
without any real squabbles, without any
real abuses, and with all the delegates con-
tinuing to attend their work sessions as you
have.
I have another point. There has been a
misspelling throughout. Some one of the
secretarial staff could not spell the word
attendance. There is no need to have a
formal amendment in that respect since you
already have a resolution passed last week
which gives the Secretary of the Convention
power to correct errors like that. I would
like now to move—
THE PRESIDENT: Just a second be-
fore you make your motion, Delegate Scan-
lan.
Are there any questions for clarification
of the Chairman of the committee? Dele-
gate H. E. Taylor. |
