and said amendment if adopted by the legal and qualified voters thereof, as herein provided, shall constitute and effect the repeal of said Section 5 of said Article XV. SECTION 2. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the amendment hereby proposed to the Constitution of this State shall be at the next general election of members of the General Assembly, to be held in this State, submitted to the legal and qualified voters thereof for their adoption or rejection, in pursuance of the directions contained in Article XIV of the Constitution of this State, and at said general election the vote on said proposed amendment shall be by ballot, and upon each ballot there shall be printed the words "For the Constitutional Amendment" and "Against the Constitutional Amendment," as now prescribed by law, and immediately after said election due returns shall be made to the Governor of this State of the vote for and against said proposed amendment, as directed by the said Article XIV of the Constitution. Respectfully submitted. For the Committee, W. BURNS TRUNDLE, James W. Chapman, Jr.: I move that the report be received and filed. The motion was duly seconded and after vote was declared carried. The President: The next business is the report of the Committee on Legal Education by Judge Henry Stockbridge, and I would suggest that Judge Stockbridge come forward. THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON To the President and Members of the Maryland State Bar Association: For a number of years past, whenever and wherever associations of lawyers have gathered, the subject of legal education has been a fruitful theme for reports and discussions. Local, state, and national bodies, have considered and resolved, and all the time the mills have been continuing to grind and annually add thousands of members to our profession. Let no one imagine that all this thought and paper and ink has been unproductive of results; on the contrary, to it we owe the establishment of State Boards of Examiners in many of the States, a step which has promoted a greater uniformity in the extent of the legal knowledge required of those who aspire to practice their profession upon their fellow citizens, and at the same time exacted from the aspirants a more comprehensive knowledge of the principles of the law, and more intimate acquaintance with what may be termed the technique of the profession. The report made to this Association a year ago upon this subject was a thorough and instructive review of the successive steps of progress in this direction in our own State. Similar work has been done in many of our sister States, and yet the full problem as looking, not merely to the maintenance of existing standards, but of still further elevating them, is but just beginning to be realized. The end aimed at and thus far realized has only involved the concept of a wider and more thorough knowledge of legal principles, statutory enactments and adjudicated rules. It has taken little or no account of that far vaster field of human knowledge, some acquaintance with which is essential to genuine culture, to constitute the educated man and lawyer. A few of the prominent law schools of this country are now leading a movement to require every one before com mencing the study of law to have attained and received a degree of A. B. It is hardly to be expected that as high a standard as this will receive general acceptance at a time when a millionaire ironmaker lauds through the press those who know little Latin and less Greek, because of their ignorance. But it can and ought to be required that those who wish to engage in the practice of what has for centuries been deemed one of the learned professions, should be able to spell correctly untechnical words of two syllables in their mother tongue, that a plural subject is as matter of courtesy at the least entitled to the companionship of a plural verb, and be able to construct unambiguous, simple sentences. No amount of knowledge of adjudged cases can atone for such shortcomings, and until that degree at least of general education is reached, the ambitious youth had best tarry in Jericho, take serious counsel with himself whether he is in reality qualified to undertake the presentation to the Court of a cause on which the personal freedom or hard earned savings of his fellow man may depend; in short whether he is not spoiling a first-rate plumber to make a very mediocre lawyer. It has been truly said that there is no knowledge which a man can acquire, whether in literature, science or the arts, but what comes into play at some time for the practising lawyer. But when are the fundamentals of such liberal education to be acquired? From the time of admission to the bar, the life and work of the successful lawyer is peculiarly that of the student. With the industry and verbosity of appellate courts in turning out opinions, it is work enough for any man to keep abreast of the literature of his profession. When a retainer is paid in a case involving intricate question of electricity, medical science or any of the ologies, the best the lawyer can do is a sort of cramming process, the less effectual if he is lacking in the foundation upon which to build. If then the embryo lawyer is deficient in a good preliminary education, he enters the race with a handicap which is overcome only in exceptional cases. It may occur to some of you that what has been said is far afield from the subject of legal education. In reality it lies at the very base of it. If we desire a beautiful and serviceable building, we may gratify the eye and tickle our esthetic taste with ample arch, or grotesque gargoyle, but unless we have builded upon substantial foundation, ours will prove a veritable house of cards, to totter and fall with the first stiff breeze. The fact that a good, broad, general education is an indispensable requisite to a legal education is beginning to be realized in most of our law schools, and more exacting requirements for admission are being adopted. Boards of State examiners, too, are beginning to realize that the inability to write legibly is not an infallible index of great genius, and that the ungrammatical expression of a rule of law in original phonetic orthography can not be taken as conclusive of an incipient Marshall, Webster or Story. The day must surely and soon come when a sufficiently familiar acquaintance with the English language to be on speaking and writing terms with it will count for as much in determining the qualifications for admission to practice at the law as a knowledge of distinction between a rent service and rent charge, or the ability to give a correct definition of the right of feal and divot. In a single county in a neighboring State, and to correct any possible misapprehension it was not Adams County, Ohio, there were disbarred in the year 1910 thirty-four members of our profession for practices or acts incompatible with the oaths which these men had taken as attorneys. When we remember the reluctance which exists both among lawyers and the judiciary to visit any member of the profession with so severe punishment, it must be self-evident that there was something over-ripe in Denmark. And this suggests a second topic to which the committee invites your consideration, namely, the need of more real education in what is generally called professional ethics, which is but a more mellifluous expression for common honesty and decency. Elaborate codes have been drafted and sent broad cast through the profession, but they embody nothing more than is to be found in or legitimately derived from the golden rule, as it stood before revision. The chief service of such codes has seemed to be to call into play the ingenuity of men of the type illustrated in Randolph Mason, in devising schemes of a character not obnoxious to the letter of the code, whatever they may be in spirit and effect. Most law schools have lectures upon this topic, sometimes State boards timidly ask a question involving it, but too often it is held to be too sacred to be put to any actual use for fear of injury. While a wider extension of the requirements of a broad general education as a prerequisite to the study of law will aid in the elevation of the ethical standard of the lawyer, there needs to be instilled as the fundamental requisite of a member of the bar the proper attitude, conduct and demeanor of the attorney in his relations with his client and court and his fellow-members of the bar. The young man must learn that there is no place for the morally astigmatic in the law; that law is a profession, not a trade; that the trickery which sometimes brings in the dollars under the existing mercantile practice is not to be countenanced in our profession; that the trial of a cause is something more than a game in which all is fair; that the attainment of justice between man and man is of far more importance than a temporary triumph won through technicalities. In short let the lawyer be made to learn in the law school and the office, and by the example of those practising that the attributes for the lawyer are the same as those prescribed more than a century ago in England for a judge, when it was said, "get first an honest man, and if he happens to know a little law it is of no disadvantage." HENRY STOCKBRIDGE, Baltimore, May 23, 1911. Chairman. James U. Dennis: I move that the report of the Com mittee on Legal Education be received. |