The Lawyer
(Address of William Jennings Bryan at Bar
Association Banquet, Miami, Florida, March 19,
1923.)
Allow me, first, to express my deep apprecia
tion of the compliment which the Bar Associa
tion pays me in putting this dinner on the an
niversary of my birth. It is sweet of you, as the
ladies say, to gladden a birthday—a day so much
more important to the individual immediately
concerned than to the public generally.
I am not at all sensitive about these recurring
anniversaries. John Allen used to tell a story
which applies with special force to occasions like
this. A man at Tupelo, Mississippi, was nomi
nated for County Treasurer against an occupant
of the office who had held it for two terms. The
fight was made on the third term issue, the new
candidate insisting that a change should be made
in order that the books might be examined, etc.
—you know the arguments. After he had held
the office for two terms he decided to be a can
didate for a third term but was embarrassed by
the arguments he had made against his pre
decessor. Finally, it occurred to him that he
should go around and explain the seeming incon
sistency to the man whom he had defeated. He
hunted him up and told him, that, never having
held office himself and having heard objections
made to Grant and others desiring a third term,
he thought it must be a very serious matter, but
that, after serving two terms himself, he could
see very clearly that there was no valid objection
to a third term, adding; “When I find I have
made a mistake, I am just man enough to ac
knowledge it.” J
That expresses my feelings. When I was a
young man, I thought that one sixty-three years
old was an old man, but now that I have reached
that age myself, I can see that a man of sixty
three is in the prime o,f life and, like the man in
Allen’s story, “when I find I have made a mis
take, I am just man enough to acknowledge it.”
I do not know where I could more appropri
ately celebrate this anniversary than at a bar
banquet. I practised law in my younger days;
and Mrs. Bryan is a member of the profession.
Her admittance to the bar soon after we moved
to Nebraska gave a Jacksonville (Illinois) friend
and neighbor an opportunity to get off a bit of
humor. He sent me a postal card congratulating
me and saying, “I always thought there was
room for one good lawyer in your family.” The
ambition to be a lawyer took possession of me
before I was six years old. My father was a
lawyer and for twelve years a judge; this fact
probably accounts for my choice of the legal
profession. This ambition guided me through
my boyhood and youth, through college and law
BcnooJ. i practised for a while in Illinois and
then went to Nebraska to practise law. All the
reasons that took me there were professional
reasons. That I did not go to Nebraska for po
litical reasons you can easily believe when I tell
you that, when I went there, the state was Re
publican, the district was Republican, the city
was Republican, and the voting precinct in which
I resided was Republican. I went into politics
by accident and staid there by design. I was
nominated for congress because they thought I
could not be elected—if it had been a Democratic
district, the honor would have gone to someone
older and more deserving. My election to con
gress in 1 890 was due to a landslide and my de
feat for the United States Senate four years later
was due to another landslide in the opposite di
rection. My first presidential campaign followed
two years later and I became so deeply inter
ested in the problems of government that I have
never since that time felt justified in withdraw
ing from the study and discussion of these prob
lems. After my second campaign I established
The Commoner as a means of laying before the
public the Democratic side of political issues.
But I digress. Having a lawyer for a father,
and another for a wife, being trained for the
law myself and having an only son in the pro
fession, I am in position to appreciate the place
that the lawyer occupies and the work that he
does. I have no sympathy with the jokes that
are perpetrated at the expense of the profession,
although my love of humor makes me enjoy a
good joke even when I protest against the in
justice of it.
One of these jokes was perpetrated in Nebras
ka, back in the days when the Populists were
„ powerful. They, it will be remembered, were
strongly prejudiced against lawyers. The story
illustrates this prejudice. A Populist was put
in nomination for an office in a speech in which
he was referred to as a lawyer. His friends at
once say that his connection with the profession
was likely to injure him with the delegates. An
other friend immediately arose and restored him
to favor by explaining that he HAD BEEN a
lawryer but had been disbarred.
The law is a very ancient and very honorable
profession. Lawyers became necessary as soon
as organized government was established among
men. Laws must not only be interpreted to those
who desire to obey them but they must be en
forced against those who violate them. Law may
be called the trunk of the tree out of which three
branches have grown—the lawr-giver who writes
the law, the lawyer who interprets the law for
clients, and the judge who decides the legal ques
tions raised and administers justice. While I
have named the law-gfver first, I shall leave the
discussion of his work for the last and ask your
attention first to the judge before speaking of
the lawyer.
The judge is the most highly respected of the
three characters that make up the trinity of the
profession. He is selected because of his sense
of justice, knowledge of the law, and incorrupti
bility. As the statesman regards the Presidency
as the crowning reward of those who devote
themselves to the science of government, so the
office of chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of
the United States is the highest position to
which the lawyer can aspire. The Presidency
carries with it a larger relative influence in the
moulding of government than the position of
Chief-Justice does in the administration of jus
tice, but the relative dignity of the positions is
the same; they are the peak in the respective
paths which they represent.
It is no r^flectionmpon the integrity of the
bench or upon the probity of the judge to point
out four phases of the judge’s work that deserve
attention. First, the judge is human and is as
liable as others to be unconsciously biased by his
own personal interests. We have a recent illus
tration of that in a judge at West Palm Beach.
He attempted to suppress criticism of himself on
the ground that it was an interference with the
administration of justice. The Supreme Court
held that it was not so obvious an interference
as would justify the punishment of the critics.
This case is proof of the fact that an honest
judge may go beyond his judicial rights in at
tempting to punish reflections upon his official
acts. No judge is permitted to preside in a case
in which he is pecuniarly interested.
Second, the judge is a citizen and, as a citizen,
has a political bias which may unconsciously in
fluence him in the deciding of partizan questions.
This finds illustration in the action of the elec
toral commission of 187 6. The five Supreme
Court judges of longest service, appointed on the
commission, decided the questions vitally affect
ing the election contest three to two, just as they
would have voted if they had been marking their
own ballots as individuals.
Third, judges may be unconsciously influenced
by class bias, a fact frequently illustrated by
jud cial decisions—the most conspicuous of
which was the decision on the incoime tax law in
1895.
Fourth, the Constitutional right of a majority
of the Supreme Court to nullify, as unconstitu
tional, a law passed by congress and, signed by
the President, or a law passed by a state legisla
ture and signed by a governor. Such decisions N
have sometimes been rendered by a major ty of
one; this gives to the one judge whose vote de
cides the question (the rest of the court being
equally divided) the power to override the opin
ion of all those who participated in passing the
law. The justice and public policy of vesting
such power in one judge is being more and more
called in question and I venture to predict that
it is only a question of time when our Constitu
tions, state and national, will be so changed as
to require the concurrence of more than a bare
majority to declare a law unconstitutional. The
constitution of Ohio requires two-thirds.
And now a word as to the lawyer; his pro
fession, always respectable, increases in impor
tance with the growth of popular government. He
is broadened by the study and investigation
forced upon him by the questions which he must
discuss. Since he must deal with every phase of
human life and every line of human activity, no
other work is quite so educational. All avenues
are open to the lawyer and many are led away
from the general practise into some special line
of work. So many lawyers go into business,
banking, manufacturing, and developing that the
study of the law has come to be regarded as a
valuable preparatory course even though one
does not intend to practise.
The lawyer’s work is in the open—there is a
lawyer on the other side to answer him and to
disclose any wrong doing. This may explain, in
part, the high standard of honesty, honor and
rfair dealing among lawyers.
Oratory is the special field of the lawyer. The
greatest orators in history began their speech
making in the presentation of the cases of their
clients. Demosthenes and Cicero, who have been
followed as models during all the centuries since
they Jived, advanced from the practise of the law
to the unique position of teachers of the art of
public speaking.
Patrick Henry, the orator of the Revolution,
and Webster, Calhoun, and Clay, th^ great tri
umvirate whose eloquence charmed the
generation that lived just before the Civil War,
« were lawyers. In the public life of the United
States, the lawyer has played a very conspic
uous part. Most of the leaders of the Senate and
House were first lawyers, though not always as
prominent at the bar as in the political arena.
Disraeli went so far as to say that the young
lawyer must choose between the two careers be
cause of the different qualities that these careers
' required and developed.
The law, more than any other line of work,
has been the stepping-stone to the Presidency.
Of the four Presidents who are classed among
the immortals, only one, Washington, was not a
lawyer; he owed his election to his military
service rather than to engineering, his profes
sion. Two of the others, Jefferson and Lincoln,
were indebted to their legal training for the
ability in debate that won their leadership, while
Jackson combined military prestige with experi
ence at the bar. Two of our most recent presi
dents advanced from the bar to other lines of
work. President Taft became a judge before he
became president and went from the White
House to the Supreme Court where he will end
his career in tne office which has been his dream
from the time he became a member of the bar.
President Wilson found the work of a scholar
more fascinating than the rout’ne of the practi
tioner and was the first representative of higher
education to reach the executive office.
I have reserved for the last the honorable
work of the law-maker. He begins with the
study of law as it IS and with the application
of the existing laws to the facts in each case. If
he becomes a judge, his field is enlarged and he
may play an important part in so-called judicial
legislation, viz., the establishment of legal prin
ciples by court precedent. But the work that ap
peals most powerfully to the lawyer is the fram
ing of statutes that give expression to the peo
ple’s will. Instead of discussing laws that
ARE, he drafts the laws that SHOULD BE; he
brings law up to date by applying old principles
to new conditions. As a lawyer he finds the weak
poiints in existing laws and is able to suggest im
provements. He enters bis profession as the
servant of ^clients who pay him, often large
sums, for looking after their individual inter
ests; he concludes as the servant of the public,
working for the benefit of the multitude. His
salary, usually small in dollars, is supplemented
by a satisfaction which the mere making of
money cannot furnish.
I congratulate the lawyers of Florida upon the
excellent reputation they enjoy and the oppor
tunities which their profession offers them in
this state, just entering upon a period of great
development. I am glad to count myself one of
them, even though I do not find time to engage
in the practise. I am sure that those who, as
lawyers, have taken an oath to assist in the ad
ministration of justice, will put the interests of
the whole state first and use their legal knowl
edge and their personal influence for the im
provement of the statutes, the simplification of
the pleadings, the enforcement of the,laws; and
the perfection of the courts.
A lot of trouble was caused by the prayer of
the chaplain of the Colorado house in which he
affirmed that God had been expelled from the
churches, that the courts are corrupt and that
people are going to the dogs with tremendous
rapidity. Judging from his prayer the chaplain
must have confined his observation and reading
entirely to Colorado.
The price of gasoline is again on the ascent.
Nobody, however, has been able to determine to
their own satisfaction whether it is because the
Standard Oil has that poor feeling after getting
rid of that huge stock dividend or whether John
D. is about to endow another foundation.
An Iowa senator has introduced a bill pro
viding for a steel roof over all of the federal
highways in that state so that roads may be
usable all the year round. The Iowa legisla
ture also was convened for the purpose of r©
ducing taxes.