done that is not brought to the attention of the bar, or the public, in passing upon those petitions. It is of great importance to the bar that those petitions be carefully studied and acted upon before they are turned down; and it is on account of that large volume of cases that are not heard, as well as on account of the cases that are heard, that we may have to ask for more law clerks. The men we have are pressed too hard for fair treatment of them; and it would probably be of benefit to everyone concerned to have additional clerks, but we are not asking for them now. Mr. RABAUT. Is there some work neglected over there now? Mr. JUSTICE BURTON. No; but the result is that the Justices and the law clerks work late into the night every night. Mr. RABAUT. You have a great deal of overtime? Mr. JUSTICE BURTON. Yes; a great deal of it. Mr. RABAUT. I think it would be well to develop the overtime― to keep tab of the overtime and show what the result is at present. (After discussion off the record.) SALARIES Mr. RABAUT. Your salaries are about the same, except for the changes made under Public Law 106? Mr. Justice BURTON. Yes. You will see in the tabulation-and perhaps Mr. Waggaman can take this up better than I can-the actual expenditures for 1945 were $505,646, after the estimated savings and unobligated balance carried over, and for 1946 is where the change comes. That is up to $583,220, and that represents these additional payments due to Public Law 106. So this year, So this year, when you come to the $591,200, it is practically the same thing. I would like to have Mr. Waggaman supplement that. Mr. WAGGAMAN. There are no comments; you have explained everything. PREPARATION OF RULES FOR CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS Mr. RABAUT. We will take up the next item, unexpended balance of the appropriation, "Preparation of rules for criminal proceedings, Supreme Court." Mr. Justice BURTON. I may say that that and the following item relate to the preparation of revised rules for criminal procedure and revised rules for civil procedure; and, in both cases, the rules are nearly ready to be issued. There is a small unobligated balance which will take care of whatever is needed. If that can be continued available, that will take care of the entire item; there is nothing new required at all. Mr. RABAUT. Is that an unexpended balance in both places? PRINTING AND BINDING Mr. RABAUT. How about printing and binding-is that up? Mr. WAGGAMAN. For printing and binding, we have Mr. Cropley's statement. Mr. Justice BURTON. I am presenting Mr. Cropley's statement, as this is an item that comes under the jurisdiction of the clerk. I may say it calls for precisely the same amount that was asked for last year. Mr. RABAUT. It is the same as you had last year? Mr. Justice BURTON. There was an increase last year from $26,000 to $37,000, plus the amount to take care of the deficit. This year it is precisely the same as last year-$37,000. Mr. RABAUT. It is the same type work, and the same work load? Mr. Justice BURTON. Yes; the same character of work. It covers the private contract we have for printing our opinions. Then we also. have the printing and binding of briefs and records and similar work that is done by the Government Printing Office. Mr. RABAUT. Were not you binding some books you had over there, by doing so many books a year? Mr. WAGGAMAN. Yes, sir. Mr. RABAUT. Are you still keeping that up? Mr. WAGGAMAN. We have the Gerry Library. You gave us $6,300 for this last year as a special fund to complete the rebinding of the Gerry books. That work is progressing beautifully, and the next 3 or 4 months will finish it. The gentleman doing it got sick, or it would be finished already. The Gerry Library is in addition to our working library. I would like to call your attention to the fact we still have in the working library, about 13,000 volumes, requiring reconditioning that we have not yet been able to touch. We have been spending currently about $5,000 a year on that; but, unfortunately, most of that $5,000 is used to bind current English law reports, law reviews, and hearings, and other various and miscellaneous unbound journals and documents that we have to keep. Mr. RABAUT. How much of this money actually gets down to the work on the 13,000 volumes? Mr. WAGGAMAN. About one-third of the $5,000. Mr. RABAUT. How much does it cost a volume? Mr. WAGGAMAN. $2.50 to $4.50, depending on who is doing it. We are having it done for as little as $2.50 to $3.50, and the Government Printing Office charges us more than that. Mr. HARE. How many volumes are there to be bound? Mr. WAGGAMAN. We have an indefinite number in our inactive collection. The justice spoke of law clerks. Likewise, we want to lay the foundation this year for a presentation we want to make next year, concerning our binding. I do not think it is possible to continue indefinitely binding as we are now doing. We want to explore, with your permission, the possibility of binding on the premises because we believe we can do it more reasonably that way. We are now paying a large price for this work. (After discussion off the record:) MISCELLANEOUS EXPENSES Mr. RABAUT. For miscellaneous expenses, you have $34,900 and the estimate for 1947 is down to $28,600. What is the casue of the reduction? Mr. WAGGAMAN. The cause of the reduction is that the $6,300 for the Gerry Library that we spent in rebinding is a nonrecurring item. Mr. RABAUT. You cannot reduce it any more? Mr. WAGGAMAN. No. Mr. RABAUT. There is no new language? Mr. WAGGAMAN. No new language. Mr. RABAUT. If there are no further questions, thank you very much. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1946. UNITED STATES CUSTOMS COURT STATEMENTS OF HON. WEBSTER J. OLIVER, PRESIDING JUDGE, AND JOHN C. BROWN, BUDGET OFFICER SALARIES AND EXPENSES Mr. RABAUT. We turn now to salaries and expenses for the United States Customs Court. Judge Oliver is before us this morning. Without objection, we will put page 14 of the justifications in the record setting forth the summary of the estimate. (The matter above referred to is as follows:) RECONCILIATION OF ESTIMATE TO CURRENT APPROPRIATIONS Transferred from- $233, 200 40, 300 $273, 500 "Contingent expenses, United States Customs Court". Total appropriations for 1946 - - - . Additions: 01 Personal services: Cost in 1947 of within-grade promotions granted in Reclassifications__ Total estimate for 1947.. 13, 000 1,000 287, 500 $1, 330 200 6, 670 8, 200 295, 700 Mr. RABAUT. The appropriation, with supplementals, and so forth for 1946 reached a figure of $287,500, and the estimate for 1947 is $295,700. We have an increase here. Tell us something about this, Judge Oliver. NEED FOR ADDITIONAL LAW SECRETARIES Judge OLIVER. It is rather unusual for me to come before the committee asking for an increase, but that $8,200 we are asking this year covers statutory increases over which we have no control, of about $1,530, and the balance of $6,670 covers reclasisfication of two groups and one individual. The group classification we are asking increases for are the law secretaries. We have never asked you to give us separate secretaries and law clerks the way the most of the district judges of the Federal courts have their offices set up; but we have a law secretary. They are civil service and they are career men. The most of them have been there for years in our specialized line and, of course, they could not be replaced, and there has not been any increase worth while for them except statutory, right along. So after this change was made in the Federal district court whereby those combined secretary and law-clerk classifications were made, we are now asking you folks to increase the grade to P-4, the professional class, and put these secretary-law clerks in the P-4 class. The strange thing about that change is that for seven of those nine secretary-law clerks, that is, seven of the judges' clerks, in this change of grade to P-4 we require no more money; it does not mean any increase in cash outlay at all. Mr. RABAUT. They are at the top of one grade? Mr. BROWN. And the minimum of the next grade, and it does not mean an increase. Judge OLIVER. One is now getting $4,080 and the other $3,750. And, in this change, we are asking for the additional money to bring them up to the minimum of the P-4 classification which is starting at $4,300. Mr. RABAUT. You are bringing them both up to $4,300? Judge OLIVER. Yes. There is no reason why we should not, because both are veterans and both should be there. INCREASES FOR COURT REPORTERS As to court reporters, the second class we are asking an advance for, we want to raise them from CAF-8 to CAF-11. In that connection, I want to say this: I think the work in our particular court, as far as court reporters are concerned, calls for a higher grade of reporter than in the ordinary court. The salaries we are paying them are so low and so below their earning capacity elsewhere that in the last year or year and a half we lost three of our best men. Mr. RABAUT. Have you always had court reporters? Judge OLIVER. Oh, yes; we have always had court reporters; no contract reporters; they were our own court reporters. Mr. HARE. Would you mind stating for the record the functions of the court, the duties of those law clerks and reporters? Judge OLIVER. They are set forth in the justifications, but let me say for the record, in reply to your question, that as to our law clerks and secretaries, in the first place, some of them are former court reporters; they are expert stenographers and they are law clerks in that they look up and do all of the law work for our judges in the preparation of our opinions. In our court, you do not have to make decisions from the bench the way you do in some cases. After a case is tried in our court and after the record of the transcript is prepared and submitted, the judge goes over the subject that is under consideration and a special opinion must be written, a decision and an opinion must be written by each judge, unless it is one of those pro forma matters following a test case, where you can simply write a short, confirming opinion. So in every case it requires an investigation of the law by these law clerks of the questions that the court raises, for example, and we turn them over to the law clerks to check them, and they check them, because we have two briefs, and some of our briefs run anywhere from 50 to 150 page briefs. And when you wade through those, you may have anywhere from 20 to 60 cases to run down and check; because, in your opinion, you either have to follow the decisions that have been cited to support the decision, or try to distinguish why they do not control, and all of that spade work has to be done by the law clerk for you. You are through when he checks those cases for you and the things you want him to check; but otherwise he has to do all of the spade work. DUTIES OF THE CUSTOMS COURT Mr. RABAUT. Briefly, for the record, touch on the duties of the Customs Court itself. Judge OLIVER. The court itself is different from any other court. I was going to touch on that in connection with the court reporters, because our stuff is so technical that the average lawyer could not try a case in our court. When I say the average lawyer could not try a case in our court, I am not casting any aspersions on any other lawyer, but it is a fact that the ordinary lawyer, who is well versed in the law, coming into our court is absolutely lost because of the precedents. While the method of introducing evidence is the same and he would not be lost there and can make an argument perfectly satisfactorily any lawyer can present the argument-but as to what controls in our court he would be absolutely mystified, because in the ordinary court, you have torts, contracts, admiralty, patent law, and so forth-patent law is a little technical, too, naturally-but we do not have the ordinary type of cases. We do not have the same type of case of plaintiff against defendant seeking damages, for example. In our court, every case is against the Government. The Government has the money. The importer cannot get his goods released from Customs custody until he pays what the collector claims is the proper duty on that merchandise. The man comes in with a shipment of goods and makes entry at the port of entry. The port of entry may be where the ship comes in, where it was in colonial days and literally the port of entry was where the ship entered, or it may be at Denver, Colo.; because today, under our part of the act, Denver, Colo., or Omaha, Nebr., are just as much ports of entry as New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, or Baltimore, because the merchandise comes off that ship under Government custody and what happens with it is it may be shipped out to Omaha under Government custody, where it goes into the warehouse of the customhouse out there, where they have local appraisers, local collectors, and it is just as much a port of entry out there, as far as entry is concerned, as if the importer brought it in at San Francisco. And if he has a question come up there as to value, or classification, so he must bring a case in our court, he does not have to come to New York where our warehouse is here, but we go to him; because you may have a case where it would be a great injustice to the importer. He may have a case which only involves $100 in duties and it would not pay him to come to New York and bring the case there, and he would say "Oh, let it go." So, rather than have him let it go-that is not fair to the businessman-we have what we call out of town dockets. We have nine |
