The Lawyer and the State

Abstract

Rufus Choate said of the legal profession that better than any other calling in life it enabled its members to serve the State. It is this, he says, which "raises it from a mere calling by which bread, fame, and social place may be earned, to a function by which the republic may be served. It raises it from a dexterous art and a subtle and flexible science, from a cunning logic, a gilded rhetoric, and an ambitious learning, wearing the purple robe of the sophists, and letting itself to hire, to the dignity of almost a department of government–an instrumentality of the State for the well being and conservation of the State." And in the pages of history we shall find abundant justification of the tribute thus expressed.