responsibilities. Liberal education brings with it a sense of proportion and an appreciation of essential values which fit the lawyer to bear the moral responsibilities of the profession. It is not without significance from the educational viewpoint that the members of the Bar who have been disciplined by the Appellate Division in this department, have been, with rare exceptions, men without liberal education

"We are satisfied that the first and most important step to be taken towards strengthening our Bar is to encourage increased study, of general educational value, on the part of all candidates for admission to the Bar."

Such is the testimony given early in the current year by a representative committee, a body of professional lawyers speaking to an association of professional lawyers, on legal education.

In 1879 again, the Committee on Legal Education of the American Bar Association proposed a series of resolutions. In one of these resolutions the committee makes this suggestion: "That the several state and local bar associations be respectfully requested to recommend and further in their respective states the maintenance by public authority of schools of law, provided with faculties of at least four well-paid and efficient teachers." The concluding resolution was in this form:

"Resolved, That the said state and other local bar associations be respectfully requested to recommend and further in such law schools the requirement of attendance on at least the studies and exercises appointed for said course of three years, as a qualification for examination to be admitted to the Bar."

Forty-one years afterwards, in July of 1920, the Committee on Legal Education of the Ohio State Bar Association, after an elaborate review of the statistics in Ohio from 1907 to 1916 inclusive, as to the results obtained in examinations for admission to the Bar, of students coming to the Ohio Examining Board through law offices, and students coming to the Board through law schools, proposes this resolution:

"Resolved, That the study of the law should be required to be done in a law school approved by the Supreme Court; the period of study should be three years, where the law school work is carried on in the day time; four years of study should be required in a law school where the major part of the work is done at night."

Between the resolution of the Committee of the American Bar Association in 1879, and the resolution of the Committee of

the Ohio State Bar Association in 1920, there is practically no difference. We stand to-day where we stood forty-one years ago. Why this result? The ideal was clearly recognized. Why should there be this failure to move forward? I take my answer in part from the same interesting report of the Ohio Committee of last July:

"It has been about twenty years since any material change in Ohio was made in the requirement for admission to the Bar; this study of the statistics shows a condition both in general education and in legal education of the men coming to the practice of the profession of law that should not be flattering when contrasted with the requirements for the practice of medicine, of dentistry and of pharmacy in this state.

"Yet it would be useless to advocate any program of importance without first making an educational campaign among the Ohio Bar itself."

I beg you, gentlemen, to note the point. It is here that the Ohio Committee on Legal Education strikes the keynote. We say that the American Bar Association is indifferent to legal education; let us grant that this is so. Indifferent-but why? Because the organizations which are interested in American legal education, all of them, the Section of Legal Education, the Association of American Law Schools, the State Boards of Bar Examiners, the Committees on Legal Education of the different State Board Associations, have not realized the fact that their great primary mission on earth just now, if they are to advance the cause of professional legal education, is to organize their strength for co-operation in a broad, forward-looking educational campaign among the members of the active profession in general, and the American Bar Association in particular.

It is sometimes suggested that if the American Bar Association is indifferent and shows its indifference to legal education, therefore other Associations within the profession which are interested in legal education should not go to the trouble of meeting with the American Bar Association. It seems to me that this is an instance of inverted logic.

Grant that the American Bar Association, an organization of twelve thousand members, shows no great active interest in legal education, shall the four hundred members of leading law school faculties therefore stand aloof? Quite the other way. I submit

that granting this lack of active interest on the part of the American Bar Association, it is only an additional reason why the members of the law faculties within the Law School Association, the members of the law faculties outside the Association, the members of the State Boards of Bar Examiners, the members of the Committees on Legal Education in the State and Local Bar Associations, and other members of the profession who have an active interest in the cause of legal education, should come into this Section, and there co-operate, as members of the American Bar Association, in an organized forward movement to advance and maintain the ideals of legal education in America. We have no lack of organizations. Our aggregate strength is ample. But we have never organized our strength. The allies are fighting separately.

My concluding word is that we follow the example of the Allies in the World War. Our various legal education associations, natural allies in one great cause, should come together under one leadership for active co-operation in behalf of the ideals of legal education in America.

INTEREST OF THE PUBLIC IN LEGAL EDUCATION.

BY

ANDREW A. BRUCE,

OF MINNESOTA.

I am to speak on the subject of the Interest of the Public in Legal Education. I realize that I will tell you many things that you already know and it is also possible that I may bring nothing new to you. I realize also that I may be criticized for treating the subject too broadly. I am of the opinion, however, that the whole trouble lies in the general failure to understand real values and I will treat the subject broadly in order that those values may be emphasized and perhaps be better understood. If they are understood there will be no lack of public support for the cause of legal education.

I think you will all agree with me when I say that the average layman, whether he be a bricklayer or a college president or trustee, has but little sympathy with legal education or any real appreciation of its necessary scope, its necessities and its value; that the law school has too often been looked upon and tolerated merely as a means to swell the total number of catalog students of our universities, and that the result has been a desire for numbers rather than for quality and for scholarship and a financial support grudgingly bestowed and ridiculously inadequate when compared with that which has been given to the other departments of our universities.

Some of you, but not all, will also agree with me when I also say that there has been a general failure to recognize the social value of legal education and that, even where interest has been shown in the law school, too great emphasis has been placed upon it as a school for the training of practicing lawyers rather than as a school of jurisprudence and of citizenship; and that the numbers have been reduced and the standards raised more from the fear that the active profession may be overcrowded than from any real interest in legal education itself. And further, that sometimes, and in seeking to raise the standards of our schools,

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and especially in determining their scope and jurisdiction and in seeking appropriations therefor, we have lost sight of the fact that a knowledge of the law is not only necessary to the practicing lawyer and the judge, but to every one who really seeks to take an intelligent part in government.

Sir William Blackstone wrote his famous commentaries for the gentlemen of England rather than for the lawyers of England. . He did so because he realized that it was the gentry class who in his time largely possessed and controlled the ballot, filled the public offices, sat in parliament and controlled the policies of Great Britain. They were the governing class and he considered it absolutely necessary that the governing class should be acquainted with the law, the history and the traditions of the country which it sought to govern.

Today in America we have no governing class and what was necessary in Blackstone's day for the few is now necessary for us all. We have given the ballot to every one. We have the initiative, the referendum and the recall. Every one can vote on constitutional questions. Anyone can be elected to public office. If we would have a sane and a thoughtful democracy and a government by law rather than by a temporary majority and by the prejudice and the passions of men, we must spread broadcast a knowledge of government and of basic legal principles. Our educational system must somewhere furnish to all an opportunity for acquiring the information and the knowledge which is absolutely necessary to intelligent citizenship and which all should have; or at any rate be prepared to turn out not only practicing lawyers but trained men and women who in every walk of life may lead and guide the great social advance.

The history of the South American states and of Mexico and of Russia, should by this time have taught us that the problem of government is the most important of all problems. Natural wealth in itself means nothing. Mexico is almost as rich in natural resources as is the United States. Before the World's War, the Empire of Russia owned one-eighth of the land surface of the globe. Yet who would live in Russia or in Mexico? It has been our democratic but at the same time individualistic and selfrespecting comradeship which has made America possible, and above all, the fact that we alone of the world's great cosmopolitan