Page:North Dakota Law Review Vol. 2 No. 2 (1925).pdf/1



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We are well on the way toward our next annual meeting. For the most part committee reports at our annual meetings have been hastily prepared during the days immediately preceding the meetings and often they have been one man reports. Each committee has entrusted to it matters worthy of the attention and consideration of the entire bar association. To secure adequate consideration it is necessary to delegate to a small group the responsibility of making needed investigation and presenting to the association the conclusions growing therefrom. It is doubtful if within the lifetime of those now active in the profession there has been such general interest as now prevails in all phases of legal and judicial reform. Much of the discussion is superficial. It therefore is our duty as an association to make our professional consideration thorough and as scientific as possible. It is urged that the committee chairmen organize their work at once. This can be done effectively by correspondence, and all members of committees are asked to favor their respective chairmen with their views, so that every committee report may express a composite judgment deliberately reached.

"If we do our duty by the common law of the 20th Century, we must make it a living system of doing justice for the society of today and tomorrow, as the formers of our policy made of the traditional materials of their generation an instrument of justice for that time and for ours.

"And chiefly the responsibility for doing this will rest upon preachers and writers.

"Laws are not self-enforcing, and the very life of law is in its enforcement. But except as a vigorous despot may put rules in force by the might of his arms, enforcement depends on the general will."

—Dean Roscoe Pound.