seventeenth century, be said: "While he lives, he is the delight of the courts, the ornament of the bar, the glory of his profession, the terror of deceit, the oracle of his country; and when death shall call him to the bar of Heaven by a habeas corpus, he will find his Judge his advocate; nonsuit the Evil One, obtain a liberate from all his infirmities and continue still one of the long robe in glory." Such lawyers still exist. Moreover, it is only from such as they that the bar chooses its real leaders. And so long as the profession itself thus continues to recognize and apply the true tests for professional distinction, we need not be discouraged if extrinsic causes have temporarily lessened its influence in the community. II SOME RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE 1 AMERICAN LAWYER 1 PROCEDURE, remedies and court organizations outlive their usefulness after periods of fairly uniform duration. The need for correcting the methods of administering the law is constantly recurring. While we may view with caution proposals to make radical changes in the common law, and in the equally revered, if less ancient, principles embodied in our Constitution, we should never shrink from a candid inquiry as to whether the administration of justice is too technical or too costly or too tardy, and whether its methods are so at variance with our national habits and thought as to obscure the beneficent principles of our system of law. It is especially fitting at the present time to make such an inquiry. The war and its distressing after-effects are bringing the world face to face with real values in life, particularly in the realm of the intellectual and the spiritual; and this will lead to a scrutiny of existing institutions more searching than in normal times. SIMPLIFICATION OF PROCEDURE The reasonable limits of this address do not permit me to enter upon a discussion of the comparative merits of the pending projects for simplifying our court procedure. But I am persuaded that there 1 President's address, delivered before the New York State Bar Association, at its annual meeting, held in New York city January 16-17, 1920. should be no further delay in arriving at an agreement upon some plan. A radical simplification is one of the crying needs of the times. The public cares little about whether there is to be a short code supplemented by rules of court, or a longer code affording greater flexibility to respond to changing needs. Differences concerning such matters will continue to exist, and it cannot be expected that any reform will ever receive unanimous approval. We lawyers speak of the division of the body of our law into the substantive, the adjective, the procedural and the remedial. But such terms have no significance to the general public. If our methods of procedure are uncertain and complicated, and cause delay, or if our rules of evidence and the manner in which we conduct our trials are ill adapted to bringing out the truth, or if existing remedies fail of their purpose, it will do little good for us to glorify our substantive law. The lay public cares little about the theoretical perfection of the principles of our jurisprudence; and if the machinery for their application to concrete cases is so imperfect that they cannot be readily invoked, condemnation will extend to our entire judicial system. The fact that the time for a reëxamination of our procedure has arrived ought not to be a source of discouragement. In the practice of a profession like ours, the ingenuity of the lawyer frequently directs itself to procedural technicalities. They afford opportunities for tactical advantage, and that is a part of the game. We do not stop in the heat of contest to inquire whither a repetition of such practices may lead, and gradually, under any system, procedure may become the complicated, mysterious and subtle means by which fundamental principles are obscured, and the vindication of the rights of the individual retarded or |