Page images
PDF
EPUB

logical course of urging that there be attached to our system of administering justice some instrumentality whereby the function now performed by legal aid societies shall be performed at the expense and under the direction of the government. The experience which the legal aid societies have now had clearly indicates that the responsibility does not rest exclusively upon members of the bar for the support and maintenance of legal aid organizations, but that they are the concern of the community at large, although a clear responsibility rests in this matter, as well as in many other matters relating to the duties of citizenship, upon the lawyers of the country to assume a leadership. While the bar has been chiefly responsible for the maintenance of legal aid organizations and their success has been due, in the words of one of the pioneers in the movement, to "the purest devotion of its attorneys," and has depended "upon an almost religious denial of every particle of self-interest on their part," it yet remains the fact that the work which they do is either a philanthropic work, undertaken by patriotic citizens at private expense for the benefit of the poor litigant, and thus is in the nature of a charity; or it is a proper subject to be made a part of the machinery for the administration of justice.

The bulletin would have been more useful if it had urged measures looking to the reorganization of our judicial system so as to provide that the work done by the legal aid societies should become a public function. If this line of thought had been pursued, occasion would not have been found for the gratuitous resurrection of ancient strictures upon the legal profession, having no relation to the subject under discussion. The author of the bulletin, however, reverts to the charity theory and

urges that, as legal aid societies are doing the bar's work, that fact "places the bar under the obligation to supervise and provide a leadership for legal aid work and to supply the necessary financial and moral support." The plea is apparently a "drive" to secure contributions from the bar, and the author of the bulletin, with the persuasiveness of a solicitor of funds, urges that "the shoulders of the bar are broad enough to carry the whole load so easily that the individual member would scarcely feel its weight."

VI

ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE
ASSOCIATION OF THE BAR OF THE
CITY OF NEW YORK*

Mr. President and Our Other Guests; Gentlemen of the Bench; Members of the Bar Association:

In a recent and delightful book called the Seven Lamps of Advocacy, an English Judge dwells upon the importance of fellowship among lawyers and says that "a man who joins the Bar merely as a trade or business, and does not understand that it is also a professional community with public ideals, misses the heart of the thing and he adds that advocates "enter a common Inn, dine at a common table, join a common mess upon circuit, all of which is evidence of the continuance of that right spirit of fellowship which, to my mind, is an essential of advocacy."

This must be delightful! But how impossible to emulate at the American Bar! Think of a "common mess" of the thousands of judges and lawyers throughout the length and breadth of this vast country! But social solidarity of the bar must be achieved by methods less human and therefore less appealing. Even the rare occasions when the lawyers of a great city meet at "a common table," the give and take of the English Cir

* Made at dinner to the President, Officers and Executive Committee of the American Bar Association, tendered by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, January 12, 1924.

cuit is hardly possible. The spirit of fellowship is too frequently obscured in formal, I will not say boresome, oratory.

But one object of the American Bar Association is to 'encourage cordial intercourse among members of the American Bar." How then is that physically and intellectually possible? The radio carries the human voice to more than a million auditors. But can we through that medium cultivate personal relations with the 125,000 members of the American Bar scattered throughout this great country? And will it promote "cordial" intercourse for a single lawyer or a dozen lawyers to address the rest of the bar who can neither applaud nor answer back?

If fellowship among lawyers had "news value" the newspapers might be a medium for its cultivation. But, unfortunately, it is the absence of professional cordiality that interests the public. If metropolitan newspapers correctly appraise the public taste, what diverts their readers most are exhibitions in court by prominent counsel of bad manners and breaches of those rules of decorum on which the dignity and authority of the courts largely depend.

Among such a numerous bar as ours we cannot expect through personal contact or the radio or the public press, to find an adequate substitute for the delightful fellowship of the English bar. Except within the narrow limits in which the influence of personal contacts operate, the ideals of our profession must be attained through commerce in thought and precept, maintained by professional associations so numerous that the needs of lawyers may be supplied in each community and the influence of social contact brought to bear upon them.

And so one of the most important needs of our profession is the formation, coördination and coöperation of bar associations, and perhaps even the incorporation of the entire bar in each state. Such methods as these are characteristically American. They may lack the human touch of the English system, but we are forced by sheer numbers to do something of the kind. Bar Associations on the American plan are capable of great development. They ought to become a means of establishing cordial relations among members of the bar in each community, and a potent instrumentality for the maintenance of high professional ideals. Furthermore, and perhaps most important of all, they ought to furnish an incentive for American lawyers to perform those public duties which, under our system of government, they, above all other citizens, are fitted and ought to perform.

Herein lies the vital difference between the proper functions of the English lawyer and of the American lawyer. While it is true that the English lawyer has at intervals nobly fought for the great principles underlying our civil liberties, it is not a part of his practice to consider such great political questions as those daily arising under our Federal and State Constitutions, such as the division of political functions among the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary, and the delicate balance of the powers of the Federal and State governments. Matters such as these are justiciable in few other countries. That almost daily they press upon us for consideration gives nobility to our calling. Their adequate treatment requires not only a background of professional training, but also a knowledge of the science of government and the vision of a statesman. Can

« PreviousContinue »