12 Lee Douglass PUBLICATION. ONE YEAR TERM TWO YEAR TERM John A. Chambliss, Jr...... Nashville Chattanooga SPECIAL COMMITTEES. Committee to appear before Supreme Court in support of resolution as to more stringent qualifications for admission to the Bar: Committees to arouse greater interest in Bar Association of Tennessee: PROCEEDINGS OF THE Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting OF THE Bar Association of Tennessee HELD AT. Memphis, Tennessee, June 29 and 30, 1916, The Thirty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Bar Association of Tennessee was called to order at the Memphis Country Club at 10 o'clock A. M., June 29th, 1916, by President Charles N. Burch, of Memphis, when and where the following proceedings were had: The President: Gentlemen of the Bar Association, the first order of business is the address of welcome, which Chancellor Heiskell has very kindly consented to make, and I take great pleasure in presenting to you Chancellor F. H. Heiskell. Chancellor Heiskell: Mr. President and gentlemen of the Bar Association of Tennessee, it is my privilege and my pleasure to bid you welcome. I mean this for those who do not live here. Of course, it could not be expected of a Memphis judge to welcome those lawyers who live here. He has seen too much of them already. It is my privilege and pleasure to welcome to the greatest city in Tennessee the greatest body of men in the State. The first clause of that phrase no citizen of Memphis will deny; the last part of it no member of this body will dispute. (Laughter.) Therefore, so far at least, I am without fear of successful contradiction. The greatness and beauty of our city we will show you. Col. Gant used to have a phrase when greeting visitors to the city, at a time when Memphis had only one little park, Court Square, noted for its squirrels. He would say: "We confer upon you the freedom of the squirrel pasture." Memphis has outgrown that stage and today we confer upon you a larger freedom,-the freedom of a greater city. If you see what you want, take it. If you do not see what you want, ask for it, and we will see that you get it, provided we do not have to prize the lid off in order to get to it. If our hospitality does not meet your expectation, I am sure it will be due to ignorance, and not to intention; it will be a failure of the head and not of the heart. The position of the legal profession in relation to the State and its laws is one of, vast. importance and of great responsibility. You are not charged by any express enactment with an obligation in fegard to good government more than others, but the obligation exists nevertheless, just as the members of the medical profession, by an unwritten law which makes its appeal to honor only, are charged with the duty to society of conserving the health of the people, no less by curing sickness, for which they are remunerated, than by preventing disease, a service for which they receive no financial compensation. You are the custodians of the law as really as were the scribes under the system of Israel. You are the keepers of the law which is indissolubly linked with liberty, without which there is no safety for life or property and no security in the pursuit of happiness. Lawyers have exercised in the past, and must continue to exercise in the future, a vital and controlling influence upon the formation and the growth of law. This is true whether their names appear upon the records of history or not. Two of the great compilations of laws which have exercised most influence on our jurisprudence are the Code of Justinian and the Code of Napoleon. Of the Emperor who gave us the first we remember very little from our reading of history, except in so far as he was a law-giver. Yet this monument upon which rests his fame was erected by the lawyers of that day. The Code which bears the name of the great Emperor of France, and which has exercised and will continue to exercise greater influence upon the destiny of mankind than Marengo and Austerlitz, was compiled by the lawyers of that generation. The Temple was called Solomon's, but the skilled workmer |