The Legal Profession: 50-Year Stocktaking – A Round Table

Abstract

Morris Ernst's paper is vastly stimulating and commands wide, though not complete, agreement from me. I share his general feeling of pessimism, for I think the legal profession has failed in leadership where most needed. It has been depressing to see our country tending more and more to rigid intellectual conformity, to fear of the future and of change, to loss of that tolerance for individualism and deviation from the norm which has contributed so much to our country's greatness. True, the lawyers here have been little different from the rest of the community. But that is just the reason for despondency. For they should have provided the leaders who could bring us back to reality, as did a Holmes or a Hughes in past crises. Now we have longed in vain for clear voices among our greats of the bar to force renewed recognition of the truly precious heritage we have in the Bill of Rights.