Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/140

 The Green Bag PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT 14.00 FIR ANNUM. SINGLE NUMBERS 50 CENTS. Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, S. R. WRIGHTINGTON, 31 State Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of interest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities, facetiae, and anecdotes. JUDGE SHARSWOOD'S LEGAL ETHICS.

The most important, the most difficult task that American lawyers have undertaken since the formation of the American Bar Association is undoubtedly the formulation of a code of ethics upon which the committee of that Association has been working for nearly two years. It is easy to say that the fundamental principles of common honesty are simple and sufficient, but it is a fact that there is a conflict very hard to adjust between the theory that a lawyer is a public officer and the doctrine of loyalty to a client. To the lay reader these principles have long been hopelessly irrecon cilable and only the legal mind accustomed to complexities and fine distinctions has been able to announce with certainty that the two are wholly harmonious. Few of the Bar, how ever, have agreed as to the exact manner of reconciling them or as to the legal limits for the application of each to the specific problems of,practice. But every earnest effort to clearly define them is deserving of consideration, and an eminent lawyer can do little of greater benefit to his profession or to the public than to approximate a successful statement. It was the opinion of the committee of the Bar Association that the best of these essays was one written many years ago by Chief Justice Sharswood of Pennsylvania, who for nearly forty years served his state in a judicial capa city. As the book was out of print an arrange ment was made with the former publishers to reprint it at cost, and through the generosity of Gen. Thomas H. Hubbard of New York this expense has been met and copies have been distributed free to all members of the Association for their examination as a pre liminary to criticism of the draft of the code which is promised next spring. (An Essay on Professional Ethics by George Sharswood, L.L.D., sth ed., T. & J. W. Johnson Co., Philadelphia, 1907, Reprinted for American Bar Association §1.50).

The book, which was first published in 1854. is in two parts. The first defines the lawyer's duty to the public, the second his duty to the court, to counsel and to client. In some important particulars the book is not applic able to modern conditions, as for example, its recommendations as to a course of study. The modern system of legal education has vastly changed the equipment of the young practitioner who now needs less of fundamental theorizing and more of concrete problems to which to apply his learning and from which to master local practice and obtain business experience: The high moral tone of the author, however, and his sympathetic but discerning eye for the temptations that beset our ideals are worthy of all praise. He would not tolerate the modern corporation lawyer who is described in somewhat sensational style by James French Dorrance in the January Broadwav Magazine (Y. xix, p. 407) in an article entitled " Great Corporation Lawyers and their Master strokes." What a contrast between this account of the work and rewards of, counsel for the powerful capitalists of New York .to-day and the ideals of the Pennsylvania Judge of half a century ago. Judge Sharswood believed that it would be better that the law should forbid a lawyer to sue for his fees, and that at least such a suit should be regarded as strictly unprofessional. The payment of the attorney should be rather in. the nature of a grateful reward from a relieved client. He scorns as specious the argument that the toil of the lawyer is worthy of the highest reward it can command, and he holds up the model of the Roman jurisconsult to show how we might gain a standing in the community as apostles of unselfish devotion to public good and the cause of justice. He insists that it is only when the lawyer becomes a money maker that his influence diminishes, and he quotes in proof of this from Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Empire.