Within the American Bar Association, the Traffic Court Administration was initiated on December 1, 1942. In 1950 a special committee was created to supervise the traffic court program, to be known as the Special Committee on Traffic Court Program. This committee cooperated “in establishing a national standard for improving traffic courts in concert with the President's Committee for Traffic Safety and Highway Safety Conferences, the National Safety Council, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Conference of Judicial Conferences, the Conference of Chief Justices of State Supreme Courts, and the Traffic Institute of Northwestern University.”
In 1958, the Standing Committee on Traffic Court Program replaced the Special Committee, which had functioned year to year on a temporary basis. The Standing Committee had responsibility for activities and programs relating to the administration and justice by the courts with respect to traffic cases; and it continued to cooperate with the same national groups and institutions with which the old Special Committee had worked.
Functions of the Traffic Court Program include: educational and training program for judges and prosecutors, through conferences and publications; promotion of films concerning traffic courts; aid to the state and local bar associations; maintenance of a field service; circulation of newsletters; fund raising for the work of the Committee; and awards to judges and local groups.
From 1950 to 1965, Albert B. Houghton, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, lawyer and the donor of these records, was chairman of the Committee on Traffic Court Programs. He was succeeded by Roy A. Bronson who had served on the Committee with Mr. Houghton. James P. Economos was paid director for the Traffic Court Program, with offices in Chicago, at the American Bar Center.
Mr. Houghton, a native of Oshkosh, Wsiconsin, graduated in 1902 from the Milwaukee Normal School, and later graduated from the University of Chicago, from which he received his law degree in 1909. He was city attorney for Wauwatosa for twenty years, and was a former public administrator of Milwaukee County in land condemnation proceedings. He served as a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General to hear conscientious objectors' cases in the eastern Wisconsin district of the Federal court.
