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10 Transcript 1 (1965-1966)

handle is hein.barjournals/tscb0010 and id is 1 raw text is: mm r 'a L e S. . Ba RT Address Of David L. Freeman To The S. C. Bar Associationt ON DECEMBER 9, 1984, MR. DAVID L. FREEMAN DELIVERED AN INSPIR- ING AND STIMULATING ADDRESS AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR DE- CEASED MEMBERS OF THE SOUTH CAROLINA BAR, HELD AT THE LAW SCHOOL. WE HAVE HIS PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THE ADDRESS IN FULL: President Pope, Dr. Jones, Dean Figg, Dean Prince, Ladies and Gentlemen: I have been most -charitably pee-eted. The Introduction leaves me with a mixed feeling of pleasure and a sudden, defeating impulse to admit I am not really up to its expectation. Even without this disturbing thought in the last few moments, I have from the beginning approached this occasion with a sense of inadequacy-for the most of the members of our profession whose memory we honor today were my personal exemplars over the years. I have found reassurance, however, in the certainty that the mo'st or you have also been influenced by the force of their lives. Indeed, we are all here because of this common bond, and I am most grateful to be one among you. But the composure that comes with awareness that we are united in the single urge to honor these departed lawyers is far removed from the inspiration to say what needs to be sqid. The names enscribed here today were written before. The lives are familiar in the memory of our generat.on. They are masters of our time who recall the thoughts of Oliver Wendell Holmes written in a letter to a friend: I always have thought that not place or power or popularity makes the success that one desires, but the trembling hope that one has come near to an ideal. The only ground that warrants man for thinking that he is not living in the fool's paradise if he ventures such a hope is the voice of a few masters. We can all agree that those we honor here have given reverberating voice to the ideals of the legal profession. The question for us-so long as we are given to serve- is the response that we will make. The voice is, after all, the disquieting voice of our responsibility for the condition of the legal profession today and tomorrow. I think no man at the bar can hear these words of Mr. Justice Cardozo without sens- ing their wisdom: A myth has grown up about the pro- fession of the law, a fable, a tradition, not always the truth as seen and realized in conduct, but nonetheless the chief thing about the profession, the thing that makes it worthwhile, the thing that en- nobles it, the thing that it really is in its best and truest moments, the thing with- out which, we may be sure, it would wither and die. The tradition, the ennob- - ling tradition, though it be myth as well as verity, that surrounds us with an aura, the profession of the law, is the bond between its members and one of the great concerns of man, .the cause of justice upon earth. I think we know as well as Mr. Justice Cardozo when we deal with the myth and when we experience the reality. We are pushed hard, I believe, by what he referred to at another time as a divine unrest to shape the law into a perfect thing. But the concern of us all is that we do not always act In the face of the need. The simplest lesson of !istory is that no society is static. And it follows, too, that no group within society remains static. The legal proft.ssion is no exception. As lawyers we may grasp the status quo in a frozen embrace, only to find that while we have kept our stability, the times have changed around us. In recent years, bar associations in some of the other states, concerned with the status of the practitioner in the community, have undertaken surveys to determine the public image of the lawyer today, if the surveys are to be taken at face value, leaves something to be desired. Now I do not think we need be totally woebegone in the face of such critical polls. There are cynics in every society who are prepared to be disillusioned with every. thing in which they not themselves engaged. Here is the caustic picture drawn in the 13th Century by a French cynic: I have seen incurable illness, which no doctor could be found to cure, so that the patient's life was despaired of, but I have never seen a lawsuit so evil and unjust that a lawyer could not be found to take it. There will never be a complete end to this sort of criticism. Then, too, lawyers often deal with people in trouble and defeat. And oftentimes we must be prepared to accept the blame for troubles and defeat from clients who, with their very human way, will still believe their lost cause would have prevailed but for their lawyer. I think the problems of the lawyers here are very much like those of hospitals which seem always to arouse a measure of wrath and criticism in any community. It is very difficult indeed to gain complete approval whenever your work is helping people in trouble. But when we have said all of this, we must still acknowledge that the legal pro- fession will, in the long run, gain in the sound public opinion precisely such esteem as it deserves. Our true place in the com- munity will rise or fall as we earn it. The best test of the truth, Cardozo observed, is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market. I submit that whether the legal profession is a learned and honorable profession is a mrtter under constant review in the marhet place of public thought. And where we fall short of the mark, nothing is changed or hidden from view by repeating within our fraternity that the law Is a learned and honorable profession. Here, to the degree that we fall short, is the myth, the hollow ritual, the sounding brass, the tinkling cymbal. Our burden as lawyers is to be activists in sustaining the standards of our profes- sion and in advancing the administration of justice. Professional standards are not self-sus- taining, and justice does not advance itself. Both require the continuing diligence of men who labor for something more than a mere livelihood. Professional standards do not exist in a vacuum. There is in the dry letter of the law alone nothing which will excite in the bosom of the lawyer that elevated conduct which the right practice of the law demands. This is our tradition which springs from, and finds renewal in, the constant example of leaders at the bar. Only rarely does it need enforcement by disciplinary proceed- ing, and I am persuaded that very little of the vitality in legal ethics deponds on the fear of punishment. But I am equally per- suaded that laxity in the disciplinary process lessens the whole profession, not only to the watching public but to the members of the bar who rightly sense that everything touching the profession also touches them. (Continued on next page)

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