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The Green Bag
Law is the science in which the greatest powers of the understanding are applied to the greatest number of facts. On another occasion when in the bluff old doctor's presence a superficial critic reflected upon the law and lawyers, Dr. Johnson brusquely said :— Let us have no general abuse. The law is the last result of human understanding acting upon human experience for the bene fit of the public. A government of law is the supreme manifestation of civilization. Both its creation and efficient operation are usu ally the result of the lawyer in his triple capacity of legislator, judge, and prac titioner. His power is exerted over the entire range of human thought and action. No human being is exempted from his commands and prohibitions. It is the lawyer who as judge pronounces in the name of society its judgments and commands. It is the lawyer as legislator and constitution builder who sets limits to the arbitrary powers either of princes or majorities, and it is the lawyer as practitioner who puts into operation the complicated machinery of human society in order that justice shall be done between man and man. The rudest law of the savage is better than unrestrained license. Roman law estab lished the "Roman peace" in all the vast territory which the Eternal City dominated, and protected the weak against the strong. When the Centurion ordered the great Apostle to be scourged to compel him to testify, Paul said:— Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman and uncondemned? The Centurion reported this to the Chief Captain, and said:— Take heed what thou doest; for this man is a Roman. Thus, in a ruder age, military arro gance, seeking to scourge a man with out trial or condemnation, was arrested
by the puissant majesty of the civil law. What the lawyer, when unimpeded by mere politicians, can do for society may be illustrated by the fact that during the first three centuries of the Roman Empire the great work of framing the law fell entirely upon the jurists, and so fully did they vindicate their ability that the great body of the Roman law, which still governs civilized man, shares with the culture of the Greek and the religious conception of the Hebrew the distinction of being the greatest intel lectual heritage of man. It was the lawyer in the Middle Ages who broke the iron rigor of the feudal system and constructed the modern principles of equity. The lawyers of France voiced the aspirations of their oppressed coun trymen and led the successful assault upon monarchical absolutism and class privilege. Of the national assembly which precipitated the French Revolu tion, three hundred and seventy mem bers were lawyers. Indeed the compara tive civilization of a country can be measured by the relative power and influence of its bar. To lawyers like Grotius and Puffendorf we owe the development of international law, that fair rainbow of hope which foretells the coming of the day when the deluge of blood shall cease. No country more admirably illustrates the masterful character of the legal pro fession than our own, for it was the American lawyer who precipitated the American Revolution by his agitation of unwritten constitutional principles of liberty. "No taxation without repre sentation" was a lawyer's phrase, and the Declaration of Independence, with its definition of liberty which time can not make obsolete, was at once an indict ment at the bar of history of a tyrannical Parliament and a brief for the young Republic in its appeal "to the opinions
