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Welcome Message from the President
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Flashback to the U. of M.
I cannot now be certain of the year; it must have been sometime in the early 1970’s. Cooley Law School was just getting under way. I may have still been on the Supreme Court.
Professor Paul D. Carrington, a preeminent member of the University of Michigan law faculty invited me to come and speak to his class. He was teaching a course in legal education, and, of course, I was a hot property on that subject in those days.
I don’t know what Paul expected would come out of my appearance. I had a lot of respect for him, and I thought he held me in some regard. I did not think he was trying to embarrass me in any way. I believe he sincerely wanted to expose his students to my somewhat off beat egalitarian views about legal education.
Frankly, I relished the chance to mix it up with the minions of legal educational elitism. Rather than stand at the podium and make a speech, I elected to roam about the room, engaging the students in Socratic dialog. It was pure fun.
I began by asking this question, "In the United States of America, who is entitled to study law?"
I saw a lot of quizzical expressions on a lot of faces.
It took a while, but eventually some brave soul raised a hand and offered an answer in the form of a question?
"Don’t you have to have 500 on the LSAT?"
"Do the rest of you agree?" I was looking for more input.
There ensued a brief give and take in which various theories about who gets into American Law Schools were offered. I egged them on, suggesting each time that they had not quite found the right answer.
Finally, after a pregnant pause, one timid fellow near the back of the room offered this thought, "Can’t anyone study law?"
"Bingo!"
I then reminded the assembled law students that Thomas Aquinas defined law as a rule of reason promulgated by proper authority. Promulgated means published, broadcast, announced.
Every citizen, I also reminded them, is presumed to know the law. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Our constitutions require that legislative enactments and judicial opinions be published. Public libraries stock all kinds of law books. So do book stores. Anyone can buy them.
After that dissertation, my next question brought smiles all around the room.
"In the United States of America, who is entitled to teach the law?"
By now they are beginning to think like constitutional law students. They remember the first amendment. Freedom of speech. Of course, anyone can teach law, just as anyone can teach anything they feel the urge to teach. All they need is an audience.
"Now if anyone can study the law and anyone can teach the law, who, in the United States of America is entitled to assemble for the purpose of doing these things in concert?"
That question lead to a discussion of government regulation of the educational enterprise. Once again, the spirit of constitutionally protected liberty won out, and I had the students agreeing that those of us who had organized the Thomas M. Cooley Law School were perfectly within our rights to do so.
Now we came to the stickier part. "Who, in the United States of America in entitled to practice law?"
"Don’t you have to pass a bar exam?"
"Not necessarily."
Silence. Finally, I gave them my answer. "Nobody."
After all that constitutional right business, the students seemed a little taken aback. That’s when I launched into a speech about the privilege to practice law being granted by the courts. And how the courts decide whether to admit candidates to the bar. And how the courts have the power to decide who gets to take a bar examination and who doesn’t.
That led to more discussion about whether courts can be arbitrary in such matters, and whether they can delegate their power to admit lawyers to a private agency like the American Bar Association.
I don’t know if I made any converts that day, but it sure was fun to stir the pot in those hallowed halls.
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This Page was last updated on:
07/21/2006