The sorry state of fiduciary administrative powers in American trust law is an old but healing wound. Our English brothers, who began repair on a similar lesion in the nineteenth century, are still well ahead of us. A few state legislatures poured on balm of varying degrees of efficacy years ago, but they were not many. The Commissioners on Uniform State Laws seemed to promise a cure in the early 1930's, then abandoned the effort for a generation. They have lately returned to their patient, and the Uniform Trustees' Powers Act shows promise of increasing adoption. The incorporation-by-reference treatment is now in use in three states; and a number of other jurisdictions—most notably that great aggravator of trust diseases, New York—are showing tardy concern with remedies.

It may be timely to assess the effect of statutory cure on the centuries of case-made powers rules and the double handful of antiquated statutes to which the cure will be added. I have chosen to do that within the narrow context of one prosaic example of fiduciary activity—the power to compromise claims. But some of what is developed here—most importantly the effect of the new statutes on the existing case law of administrative discretion—may deserve broader focus.