is, how very few of us read them? Then Thomas Smith comes into court. He has got to get a certificate of moral character from the court. In the old days that was nothing at all. I have been in court several times when the court said: "Charlie," addressing the clerk, " this young man wants a certificate. Give it to him." That was all there was of it. We have tried to do better than that now. The young man has two sponsors who are supposed to be responsible members of the Bar, and they are asked what they know about Thomas Smith and how long they have known him. They may not have known him very long, they may only have just met him out in the corridor and some fellow has said, "This young man is all right, just vouch for him, will you," and they say they will. But those instances are not common nowadays, and they are getting less common. The court asks: "How long have you known this young man? Did you know anything about him before he came here?" I have served on the state board for a number of years and am in touch with the attorney for the Grievance Committee of the Bar Association, who has charge of this matter of looking up the sponsors of the young men. If the sponsors are all right then the young man is presumed to be all right, and then he comes before the board and he is examined touching his qualifications. That is a mere matter of his knowledge, of course; and when he gets into the Bar if he behaves himself he stays there; if he does not, and if anybody has any complaint against him, that complaint can be lodged before the Bar Association and it will be prosecuted-I can give you my word for that, that it will be prosecuted, and if he is not fit to stay at the Bar he goes out.

Now what I am getting at is this: This Section of Legal Education I think, with Mr. Lightner, should concern itself with the proper safeguards to see to it that aspirants for the Bar and that members of the Bar should be of such moral stamina, that they are fitted to practice law, to advise clients, and to stand before the court.

Now if this Section can constitute itself into a body to devise some plan, some conclusion, whereby, humanly speaking-of

course, the young man may be privately immoral and hasn't been caught and should be in jail-whereby we can carry into effect throughout the United States and throughout the Dominion of Canada some uniform rule so that when a young man is called to the Bar he will be carefully looked over to see whether he is in accordance with the requirements and the reasonable requirements suggested by Mr. Lightner, to see whether he measures up to the moral standard that we as lawyers should require, I think that would be a consummation devoutly to be wished, and I say that that is a task that we should gladly take up.

In Illinois we are doing the best we can in that respect. We look over these young men, and we look over their sponsors. In July we had 370 applicants for admission to the Bar before us. We examined over 25,000 answers and graded them as well as we could. From those answers what could be gathered with reference to the moral attainments of a student? Nothing. If this Section will make and enforce its suggestions to the various states-and I assume to the great Dominion of Canada as well-if it will suggest any reasonable rule and requirement with reference to the moral standards, I am sure every lawyer will welcome a practically concrete suggestion to that end.

Charles A. Boston, of New York:

I did not come here with the slightest intimation that I was to be elected Chairman of this Section. I thank you, however, for the honor conferred upon me.

I have given some considerable attention to the general subject treated of in Mr. Lightner's paper, and I felt that it was proper and in line with the suggestion of the last speaker that a few practical suggestions should be made, for it is only by learning what others have done and what others are doing that we can perhaps reach a proper approximation of what we are all seeking. We should always bear in mind that communities have different problems. I speak of the problem from the standpoint of a New Yorker. I speak with some hesitation when I see before me two members of the examining board of the State of New York, and there may be a third member here, but my eye has not lighted

upon him. They are certainly better qualified from their experience to speak than I am, but I can tell you not the result but the modus operandi which prevails in New York at the present time, and I have a few perhaps speculative suggestions to make in a way which I think would improve even those.

The State of New York, Mr. Lightner says, is the only state which has a character committee. After a man has passed the board of examiners as to intellectual qualifications he has to pass an examination of a certain sort before a character committeecertainly in the first department, in which I live, and I think in all of them-and that character committee has done a great deal in late years to try and sift the character of applicants coming before it, and men have been rejected because they have not satisfied the committee of their qualification of good moral character. The committee starts out with the idea that the burden rests on the applicant to show that he is a man who ought to be trusted with this fiduciary relation. In that connection I want to call your attention to a case which I had occasion to mention last year at the meeting in Milwaukee, in which a man was disbarred, not because of any specific charges against him, but because his character and reputation in the community was such that the Court of Appeals did not think that he merited the confidence of the community and he ought not to be continued in office for that reason.

Now that principle in respect to the continuance in office of the man or his actual disbarment because he has not a good reputation is a sufficient standard it seems to me-I mean is one sufficient standard-for determining good moral character. Leaving that rule, which is a judicially established rule, and coming once again to the practice that prevails with us: Our character committee has devised two practical steps of requiring, in the first place and I think this is now embodied in the new rules for admission to Bar promulgated by our Court of Appeals about a year ago that a man shall bring to them an affidavit from two citizens, at least one of whom shall be a member of the same Bar, and personally known to the members, or one of the members of the character committee, stating in detail the acquaintance of

those affiants with the applicant and their knowledge that he is a man of good moral character. A detailed affidavit is required. Further than that, they advertise, as does the Illinois board, for three weeks in the law journal. Very few people read that paper, and many offices skip much of it, so that it is rather difficult to learn much about a man's character through that advertisement; but that is as far as the committee goes at present. The Court of Appeals, however, has supplemented that requirement by a rule which requires the board of law examiners to examine upon the code of ethics adopted by the American Bar Association. That shows at least an intellectual acquaintance with some of the problems of ethics.

There have been two or three additional suggestions made, which I will put before you for your reflection and they may be perhaps considered by the Section in ultimately standardizing the rules for investigating moral character. One of the members of the committee on character in the City of New York has suggested to one of the Bar Associations in the city that they appoint a standing committee upon character, the standing committee to be composed of a large number of volunteer members of the Association, two of whom will take as an allotment a certain number of names suggested for admission to the Bar and investigate them. That is the method for admission to the City Bar Association, which has an admission committee of twenty-one members, and no man is admitted to the City Bar Association until he has passed the scrutiny and careful investigation of the members of that committee, who go into the man's entire history. I have known a considerable number of men to be rejected from admission to the Association on the report of these sub-committees. A member of the official committee on character for admission to the State Bar, for our city, has suggested the adoption of that method as a voluntary method whereby the Bar Association itself will co-operate with the members of the character committee appointed by the judges of the Appellate Division, and will take an allotment and each investigate seriously the prior record of each applicant for admission, so that it may be known. You cannot

know in advance whether the man has good moral character or not, but you can tell his reputation and you can tell by his reputation perhaps whether he has a bad moral character or whether he lacks that degree of moral character which should deprive him of the confidence of the public.

I took a lesson not long ago from a Pinkerton detective, who told me that he never had any trouble with his domestic servants because he said that whenever he had to make a change he never engaged a new one except after he had sent two of his detectives to search out the history of the prospective servants, and he would not take anybody into his household until that had been done.

While it may appear novel to you that a man's entire record should be investigated and that the state owes it to the community to investigate an applicant for a life-long office with the same degree of care that a Pinkerton detective investigates for the purpose of employing domestic servants, yet it seems to me that a man should be required to state his entire history. Then through the co-operation of the Bar Associations that history should be verified, and if there is anything found that is unsavory in it, further investigation should be made, and if the man has not a proper explanation forthcoming he should not be allowed to become a member of the profession.

Finally, if he gets the approval of the state that he is a man who deserves to be accorded admission to practice law, it will be because he himself has produced positive evidence of his good moral character.

I have not touched upon the fact, which is an undoubted fact, that a man possessing good moral character or possessing an indifferent character, at the time of his application for admission to the Bar, may deteriorate through his experience. That, however, is a matter in respect of which other machinery will have to be devised.

At this point, the Chairman was obliged to withdraw, and requested Simeon E. Baldwin, of Connecticut, to take the Chair.