Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/541

 THE GREEN BAG

THE AMERICAN LAWYER BY ALFRED HEMENWAY WE are told that in the United States there are more than one hundred and fourteen thousand lawyers, each of whom as a part of the ceremonial of admis sion to the Bar has taken the oath of allegi ance and that other oath of impressive solemnity, the attorney's oath, whereby he invokes God's help that he may do no false hood nor consent to the doing of any in court; that he may not wittingly or will ingly promote or sue any false, ground less or unlawful suit, nor give aid or con sent to the same; that he may delay no man for lucre or "malice, but that he may conduct himself in the office of attorney within the courts according to the best of his knowledge and discretion and with all good fidelity as well to the courts as to clients. That he has a good moral character must appear to the satisfaction of the court. With zealous care justice guards her por tals. On admission to the Bar each becomes an officer of the court. It is the "office of attorney" to which he is admitted. His tenure is for life or during good behavior. Thus accredited and so consecrated, he enters upon the practice of the law whose code of morals finds fit expression in the memorable words of the "Institutes": "Juris prcecepta sunt h&c: honeste vivere, altcrinn iwn Icedcre, suum cuiqnc tribuere." "These are the precepts of the law: to live honorably, to injure nobody, to render to everyone his due." This is the golden rule of the civil law. Its terse utterance is the law's practical rule of conduct. Its gener ality does not make it valueless. It is like the cardinal points of the compass. The Bar is a part of the court. "It is believed," said Mr. Justice Miller in Gar land's case, "that no civilized nation of modern times has been without a class of

men intimately connected with the courts and with the administration of justice, called variously attorneys, counselors, solicitors, proctors, and other terms of similar im port. . . . They are as essential to the successful working of the courts as the clerks, sheriffs, and marshals, and, perhaps, as the judges themselves, since no instance is known of a court of law without a Bar. And Mr. Justice Field, in the same case, said: "The attorney and counselor being, by the solemn judicial act of the court, clothed with his office does not hold it as a matter of grace and favor. The right which it confers upon him to appear for suitors and to argue causes is something more than a mere indulgence, revocable at the pleasure of the court or at the command of the leg islature. It is a right of which he can only be deprived by the judgment of the court for moral or professional delinquency." The lawyer can be removed from his office by no act of the legislature, for disbarment must be a judicial act. The great lawyers of Rome were the real interpreters of the law. They furnished the knowledge of the law to the praetor. So it has ever been that in great measure the learning of the Court is the learning of the Bar. The opinion of the judge survives; but the arguments of counsel are forgotten. The fame of the judge lives in the memory of succeeding generations. The reputation of the lawyer is fleeting. Pemberton Leigh refused to be solicitor general, a puisne judge, a vice-chancellor, and finally declined the high office of Lord Chancellor and a peerage. Who remembers him now? His name is writ in water. And yet many an opinion of light and lead ing is but the recasting of the brief which is forgotten. Webster's argument moulded the opinion of Marshall in the Dartmouth College case. Goodrich's argument is in