Legal Idealism

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"That which is needed, it seems to me, action are equal. These men do not is what I may call an ambulatory pro offer to the profession and through it to fessorship, connected primarily with the the country that which shall have cost law school of some suitable American them nothing. Such a fact will avail university. Speaking for our own in more to fix in the busy mind of the stitution, I feel justified in saying that practitoner the moral stand his pro we should be very glad to have such a fession has taken than any comfortable professorship established in connection acceptance by his bar association of the with this school. The endowment sup report of the most conscientious and porting such a chair should be under painstaking committee recommending the management of a board of trustees the adoption of an unexceptionable code who should determine the duties of the of legal ethics. professorship and the further usefulness It may even be permitted to indulge of the fund. No person less prominent the hope that the far-reaching influence than the Chief Justice of the Supreme of such an effort at higher professional Court of the United States should, ex usefulness would go still deeper into the officio, be at the head of such a board. body-politic. He is, indeed, blind to his With him I should like to see asso environment who shall have failed to ciated specially equipped judges of state notice that a very widespread lack of and federal courts, the presidents of confidence in the work of the American national and state bar associations, the courts exists among the American people. deans of representative law schools, and, They have ground for dissatisfaction. in general, the great men of the profession. Yet the only adequate remedy, consist As soon as the modesty of the man who ent with present institutions, is to in shall feel moved to take the initiative crease the administrative power of the in inaugurating such an endowment has court and subordinate the function and been overcome, the rest appears to me curb the irresponsibility of the jury. to be a matter 'easily arranged.'" The people, in other words, must be The moral force of such a presenta asked to give up the power of the popu tion of legal idealism to the students in lar branch of the tribunal for the benefit the law schools of the country, and other of the legal. In England this could aspirants for admission to the bar, as readily be done, for England had and such an endowment would render pos still has a well-merited confidence in her sible must easily transcend that of any judges and her bar. Have the American instruction furnished by the overtaxed people the same respect for and confi resources of the law school. He who dence in their own? The question is should be privileged to speak from the crucial and its answer practically deter chair so endowed would be, beyond any minative for any satisfactory immediate possible dispute, the visible representa reform in judicial procedure. This con tive of the entire profession of America. fidence in the social loyalty of the bar His words could scarcely fail to grave is a thing of slow growth, and its vitality deep and irradicable lines upon the has been greatly sapped. For many plastic material before him, to the incal years it has withered in the noxious culable benefit of future years. fumes of a vitiated moral atmosphere. Upon the profession itself, the effect The legal practitioner is now startled could scarcely fail to be most happy. into full consciousness of the fact that In morals, as in physics, action and re any lawyer who seeks to defeat the ex