As we near the end of the century, there is heightened concern among lawyers as to the nature and future of the legal profession. The practice of law, within the definitions and borders of an organized bar, has only developed within this past century. The importance, wealth and power of the profession has outpaced even its numerical growth. Yet there is extreme disquietude, heightened by the lack of public confidence, distrust, and even hatred of lawyers and the law. For many, there are questions as to what it means to be a lawyer, and what is meant by professionalism. It therefore seems appropriate to heed the mandatory admonition of our state constitution to revisit our most fundamental principles. After weeks of thought and research, I have found historic principles to be difficult to isolate, and contentious when iterated.
However, a reasonable starting point seems to be to determine how terms such as jurisprudence, professionalism, ethics, justice and rights were defined a century ago. When we turn to A Dictionary of Law, by Henry Campbell Black, published by West Publishing Company in 1891, we find in this nobly bound classic the most "official" of the Definitions of the Terms and Phrases of American and English Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern. Black's Dictionary for generations was resorted to by lawyers, law students, and judges, defining what words meant. E.g.: Jurisprudence is the philosophy of law, or the science which treats of the principles of positive law and legal relations.
We are told that the term is not appropriately applied to actual systems of law, or to current views of law, or to suggestions for its amendment, but is the name of a science. It is the science of actual or positive law. That science which has for its function to ascertain the principles on which legal rules are based. . . . It has no direct concern with questions of moral or political policy, for they fall under the province of ethics and legislation. We are then led to see what is meant by the term "ethics." But at least in Black, in 1891, this was not an important enough word to even be defined. It did not exist between "et habuit" and "et hoc paratus est verificare." Nor could its definition be found anywhere despite diligent search.
One might then ask, well, what is a "profession"? We are told that "profession" means a public declaration respecting something. In ecclesiastical law, the act of entering into a religious order. Also a calling, vocation, known employment; divinity, medicine, and law are called the "learned professions." "Professionalism" is not defined at all. Thus, the values, ethics, and morality of the practice of law and the legal profession appear to have been wholly neglected, or at least not worthy enough to be defined.
However, we have found a major clue, namely, that the idea of a profession had its roots in ecclesiastical law. It meant, since it described "the act of entering into a religious order," as a "calling," that it was a commitment. And explicitly it was a "learned profession." It was also an extraordinarily exclusive commitment, selfless in character, and totally removed from the marketplace. The legal profession, like the other two learned professions -- the divinity and medicine -- were required to be commitment to the service of others. Although we did not find a definition of ethics, we did find in Black's Dictionary of Law, the term "etiquette of the profession." This means: the code of honor agreed on by mutual understanding, tacitly accepted by members of the legal profession, especially by the bar. And even though the idea of jurisprudence abjured anything but positive law, i.e., law as it is, Black provided us with extensive definitions of the ideas of "justice" and "rights." Justice "in jurisprudence" is:
Answered by
Sidh Vicky
at
11:27 AM on February 25, 2009
