for the court reporters, the law clerk-secretaries, deputy clerks, and the clerk's assistant. The justification which appears on pages 39 and 47 outlines that more in detail. We appeared before the Bureau of the Budget asking for those increases and they wrote Mr. Chandler about them. Mr. Chandler may want to say something about that. However, I want to refer to it now anyway. The Bureau of the Budget wrote the Administrative Office disapproving the requested reclassifications, and I think I may say generally that the basis for their objection was that if they made an exception, no matter how justified we felt they were, that it would have an effect on similar jobs, if I may so put it, in other branches of the Government and might have a bad effect. The total increase requested amounts to $112,625. The within-grade salary advancements, which we have no control over, amounted to $4,210. The reclassification of the 19 members of the personnel of the court, which was referred to the Bureau of the Budget but frowned upon by them, amounted to $9,775. I have asked for the four additional clerk-stenographers, to which I just referred, at $3,410 each, which amounts to $13,640. Of course, if you allowed me 2 additional clerk-stenographers or just half of that we could get along. That is the explanation for $27,625 of the increase requested. The air-conditioning equipment is estimated to cost $25,000. I personally feel that if we were permitted to have that done, the Public Buildings Service might put them in for us. I think we could get the amount of air conditioning we want for perhaps somewhat less than $25,000 if we are allowed any relief at all. The clerical personnel ought to have some relief in the summertime whether the judges are there working or not. I want to make clear on the record that since I have been in charge of this court, I have been very economy minded and as proof of that, I want to let you gentlemen know that since I became chief judge of the court, I have returned to the Treasury of the United States $154,000 in unused amounts. STATUS OF DOCKET I might say that there has been over a 60-percent increase in protests cases filed. There has been a slight falling off in the reappraisement cases filed and in the number of total cases filed. You might be staggered at the figures on the number of cases we have in our court, but if you knew the facts, I think you would view them in a different light. There are a great many people who at times presume to write about our court in the public press and otherwise but do not take the trouble to ask us any questions about it. When they see that there are over 100,000 cases on our calendar, all they can think of is in terms of a district court or some other trial court of general jurisdiction. As one very prominent individual estimated, we were 20 to 30 years behind on our cases, whereas the actual fact, startling as it will sound to you, is that any litigant who is ready to try his case can be reached for trial in our court within 60 days after his case is filed and the papers have gone through. That is an extraordinary situation when you consider that many courts are years behind in their calendars. DIGEST FOR THE COURT I do not want to take up any more of your time, but I would like to ask you gentlemen to hear Judge Mollison on this item of the digest for our court which we really need and which we have never had. Judge Mollison, will you cover that point, please? Judge MOLLISON. The request for $60,000 is a nonrecurring item. If we could get an appropriation for the proposed digest, we would not have to request additional money in other years for such an item. We do plan and contemplate that the digests have supplements, but they will not cost very much, and we think we can handle the supplements without increasing our budget. First, there is no digest of the decisions of the United States Customs Court, and in that respect I would like to point out that our court is the only court in the Federal Judiciary that does not have the facilities of a digest. For years, the judges struggled with various more-or-less informal and antiquated methods of keeping cards and other aids in their offices, but now as our volumes have increased and we have almost 30 law-report volumes, that situation is utterly impossible and impracticable. It has gotten to the stage where it seriously impairs our judicial efficiency insofar as the preparation of opinions and decisions is concerned. Although we are a nisi prius court and a trial court, nevertheless, according to certain implications of the law which the Congress has passed, we do write opinions for all of the decisions that we make, and we must give reasons for them. That is necessarily true because of the requirement that the application of duties must be uniform, so that it has long been the rule that the matter of uniformity of decisions is highly important. In that very connection, a digest would be absolutely an essential thing from the standpoint of legal research in order to carry out that important policy which we think is required by the law and expressed in the Constitution. We feel that the situation under which we work has gotten to the stage now where we cannot carry on in the way in which a court should carry on and maintain proper judicial efficeincy, unless we get a digest. Each year two more volumes are added, so that the longer we go, the more difficult our situaton becomes. Several years ago, we attempted to interest private law publishers in the matter of trying to get them to publish a digest of our customs decisions. Each of the publishers that we contacted-and we contacted two very large ones-refused very courteously, of course, to do that because they said the matter would not be commercially profitable for the publishers That is,there was not enough sale for such a volume among members of the bar to justify the law publishers to undertake such a task. Mr. HORAN. What is your prospective market? Judge MOLLISON. We made a survey of that with one of the representatives, in fact, several representatives, of two different publishing companies and it was felt that there would be about 875 prospective purchasers. I base that and they based it upon the following fact: That about 875 of the customs court law report volumes are printed by the Public Printer, and they took that to be the outside and maximum limit. They really thought that it might be less than that. There might be from 300 to 500 possible sales of the digest. Mr. HORAN. In other words, you are not sure about what the possible market for these books among practicing attorneys and business firms and others might be? Judge MOLLISON. Taking into account all of the Government agencies and the demands of private practitioners at the present moment, we believe that it would be less than 875. The law publishers believed that it would be perhaps between 300 and 500. Mr. Bow. Do any of the services print digests of the cases such as Commercial Clearing House or any of those? Judge MOLLISON. I would say yes and no; yes, on the fact that sometimes a particular customs court case may appear in the United States Law Week, but there is no law reporter service and no privately published law reports of our cases. That is how difficult it is. Mr. Bow. Have you given any consideration to this being assigned to the Congressional Library Law Division for the preparation of the digest? Judge MOLLISON. No, we have not given any consideration to that. We had thought along the lines on which other digests have been made for other Federal courts. As to the law publishers, for example, West made a digest for the United States Court of Claims and Bobbs-Merrill made one for the United States Tax Court, and so far as the other Federal courts are concerned, the West Publishing Co. has made digests for them, but that arises by virtue of their publication of the reporter system and, of course, that has a universal and very wide sale. That makes those digests commercially profitable, but we had thought solely along the lines of a commercial law publishing company for our digest. Mr. Bow, I think it might be well to explore the idea of the Congressional Library doing it. There you would not have to consider the profit the private firm would make because, as I understand it, this digest is for the benefit of the court more than the bar itself. Judge MOLLISON. It is for the benefit of the court primarily, but I will say that it will be for the benefit, not only of the bar, but of all the agencies of the Federal Government, including executive agencies and some of the legislative agencies. Mr. HORAN. We have been disturbed about maintaining a division of powers in our Government. What Mr. Bow has suggested here is very valid. The Congressional Library, I presume, has some of the information that I assume would be in this digest. I am not a lawyer. Mr. Bow is. There might be a saving there if the Congressional Library was called upon to supply some of the things, in that they in their operations might be able to supply them; is that true? Judge MOLLISON. I am not able to say yes or no to that question, but I would like to answer it in this way: The matter of a digest depends solely upon the skill of the digesters. It is not a job which you could assign even to an ordinary lawyer and tell him to make a digest. It comes from long experience in personally analyzing cases and in preparing the headnotes and digest paragraphs in a certain more or less expert and judicial manner and in the same manner in which those are prepared in other digests. I do not say for a minute that there is not someone in the Library of Congress who is capable of doing the job, but whoever it is, if he is capable, he would have to have experience in digesting court decisions. Mr. HORAN. What Mr. Bow is getting at is this: We are appropriating money for the law library in the Congressional Library appropriation and we are appropriating moneys on this subcommittee for other law libraries. Presumably, there might be some cases you might want analyzed here. Personally, I would prefer that the contract be left with private industry like Bobbs-Merrill or with some other private concern. Mr. Bow. Or Callaghan. Mr. HORAN. However, we would like to have you explore that and to find any savings that might be reflected from other appropriations that you are making. It is your money we are appropriating. You are a taxpayer. We are appropriating your money and of course we like to make any saving we can. Mr. Bow. The Congressional Library does an excellent job on many of these things. I do not know whether they could on this. I am simply making a suggestion on that. Judge OLIVER. There is one thought I would like to inject and I presume you realize that in our peculiar court the decisions have a very far-reaching effect on international commerce and upon conditions of this country. That is why we write so many opinions and why we have to be so careful on them. They are very far-reaching in their effect on industry generally. Mr. Bow. I can see the need for a digest. Judge OLIVER. I think your point is you are trying to explore the best way of getting what you admit we need, and that is why Judge Mollison was giving a great deal of time to it. I know he will give you any suggestions he has and he will give you the result of his investigation. Judge MOLLISON. This is just an opinion and I cannot say this with any degree of finality at all, but I would believe, assuming that we do have on the staff of the Congressional Library, and I am sure we do have some very excellent lawyers over there and I am sure they have done some excellent work on other matters, when you take into account the time that they perhaps would require and the amount of salary that they get, I still believe that from the standpoint of economy and the ultimate price that the Government would pay for the digest, the private law publishers who are in this matter from the standpoint of professional skill and a high degree of efficiency, might ultimately do the job cheaper than the other method. Mr. HORAN. All we are trying to do is to suggest a better bargaining position for you. In this committee, we are suggesting that you as a bargainer from the judiciary approach these people with all of the known facts. You have already inferred that you had not thought of what this subcommittee is doing with your money in building up these libraries in the Library of Congress. Undoubtedly, somewhere along the line, the people you are bargaining with are going to use some of these facilities for which we are appropriating money on this subcommittee, so we are just suggesting that you keep that in mind. You might be able to shave a few thousand dollars. Judge MOLLISON. We are perfectly willing to adopt any method the committee wants us to adopt. We will adopt any suggestion that you give. Mr. Bow. Was West in on this? Judge MOLLISON. West refused to bid. They courteously acknowledged the letter, but did not reply yes or no. We had made a previous request 2 years earlier to bid and they did not do anything about it then. The vice president of the Lawyers Cooperative said this: That it would require certain skilled personnel to assign to this job that they did not at that time have them and that was the reason they did not wish to make a bid. Mr. Bow. How many reports do you have now? Judge MOLLISON. We have now 28 bound volumes and I would say we have somewhere over 4,000 decisions that would have to be digested. Mr. Bow. You are adding about two volumes per year? Judge MOLLISON. Yes. I would like to say this: That the material for the digest would be contained in all our volumes, so whoever did the work would merely use our set of volumes of the decisions that we say have to be digested. You would have no other materials with which to work. Judge OLIVER. Of course, you gentlemen realize the reason why it is not commercially profitable for these publishing companies to get these out: Because our court is such a specialized court with a specialized limited bar, the average lawyer, for example, knows nothing about our court, he knows nothing about our decisions and you will not go in any general lawyers' office and find a set of our volumes there. Mr. KIRWAN. Two courts preceded you here, the United States Supreme Court and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals. I want to say this here: That I never have seen such friendly relations displayed as were displayed here this morning. Justice Burton was a Member of the Senate from Ohio and another member of that committee for the Supreme Court, though not present this morning, was a former Member of the Senate. They knew they would see two friends from Ohio, Frank Bow and myself. They even went further than that. Of all of the thousands of cases that they made opinions on, they selected two here, the United Mine Workers, which I happen to be a member of, and the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., both from my town. Judge Johnson appeared and he used to be chairman of this committee. He presented his case and along with him was Judge Garrett who was a Member of Congress for 24 years. I am trying to make you feel at home now, Judge. When you first came in, you said you did not have the honor to be a member of the legislative body. I believe you said you were not a Congressman; is that right? Judge OLIVER. That is right. Mr. KIRWAN. Did I not meet you at the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick Dinner in New York on the 17th of March this year? I am glad there is also a friendly relation with this court. Judge OLIVER. That is very probable. |