1. In the profession of law there | law, corporation law, banking law, are many kinds of work calling for the bond business, etc. many types of mind.

6. The successful lawyer must be a deep student as well as a practical man.

7. A three-year course in a law school preceded by a college course is the usual preparation required for success in law.

2. The lawyer who pleads cases in court must be able to express his thoughts clearly and forcefully. 3. Among the subjects that are of special value to the prospective law student are: English, Public Speaking, Economics, Latin, Civ- 8. Many former lawyers are enics, United States History, and gaged in the insurance or real esEnglish History. "Experience tate business. Some are employed seems to have shown that mathe-in banks and bond houses. Dean matics and formal logic have a dis- Pound adds: "Many great industinct value by way of general pre-trial corporations have at the head liminary training," comments Dean of them men who started in the

Pound.

legal profession, and from being 4. Office lawyers draw up wills, became presidents thereof. It is legal advisers to such enterprises contracts and other legal papers. also noteworthy that a great many They are consulted also in the set-lawyers become in time presidents tling of estates, in real estate trans- of banks and trust companies." actions, and in transactions involving corporate reorganizations and corporate mortgages.

5. Attorneys specialize in commercial law, patent law, real estate

tends to fit him for political life 9. The training of the lawyer and for politics. "The presidents of the United States have, with few exceptions, been either lawyers or soldiers or both," adds Dean Pound.

10. The lawyer spends part of his time in reading statutes, decisions, and reports of law cases. He also spends much time in consultation with clients, in writing pleadings and briefs and in arguments to judge and jury. "Nowadays he spends a great part of his time in advising as to the conduct of business and industrial enterprises, and in planning organizations and reorganizations," adds Dean Pound.

11. Legal training is of value in all forms of business activities.

12. Very few now read law in the office of a practicing lawyer. Attendance at a good law school is recommended.

13. The principal degree given by American law schools is that of Bachelor of Laws (L.L.B.). An additional year is required at the best law schools for the degree of Master of Laws (L.L.M.) and a second additional year in residence (Continued page 9, col. 1)

24 Pages

DAVID DUDLEY FIELD (1805-1894)

Biography on page 11

Chief Justice Taft's 71st Birthday

The seventy-first birthday of Chief Justice Taft was celebrated home at Murray Bay, Quebec. It on September 15th at his summer found the Chief Justice in improved health and the best of spirits. It is a day which always demonstrates the affection in which the Chief Justice is held by his Murray Bay friends. They prepare birthday cakes in great profusion, large and small, and arrange to shower him with flowers and other tokens of remembrance. Members of his immediate family-Mrs. Taft, his daughter, Helen, dean of Bryn Mawr, and her husband, his two sons, Robert and Charles, rising attorneys in Cincinnati, and their wives and his eleven grandchildren-were there to make the day memorable.

The summer home of the Chief Justice, described by him as "better than a tent," consisting of ten. rooms and eight baths, having grown with the family, had been prepared for the occasion, with the porch and yard ready to take care of the overflow. Arrangements had been made to serve dinner at 1:30 in the afternoon to all who could be seated in his study, Mrs. Taft's room, the living room and

(Continued page 18, col. 1)

NOVEMBER, 1928

NEWS OF THE SCHOOLS

University of Colorado School of Law Boulder, Colo.

For the first time in the history of the school, a graduate course leading to the degree LL.M. is being offered this year by the School of Law of the University of Colorado, under the direct supervision of Dean James Grafton Rogers. The course consists of an intensive study of advanced corporation and financing law, including security issues, business organizations and reorganizations, trust and investment documents. A lesser stress is laid on a course on current legal problems, history and literature.

A seminar course in Business Organızation covers a survey of the corporation laws of the states of Colorado, Delaware and New York, methods and steps involved in corporate organization with project work in preparing articles of incorporation, amendments thereto, reorganizations and dissolutions, and various security and trust problems.

In addition, the students are required to pursue in the School of Business Administration courses in Business Finance and Investment Law, and Accounting. A second seminar course covers a survey of general legal literature, current problems and new developments in the

law field.

Utah

Sept. '24

Vt.

Oct. '27

79

4

40

13

NOVEMBER, 1928

"The Law Student" is published during the law school year from September to May. This is the second number for the school year 1928-1929. The next number will be published January 1st.

Examples

November 6th the qualified voters of the United States elected and elevated to the presidency Herbert Hoover of California instead

greatest state in the union, in which office he has conducted himself so as not only to have avoided any real criticism, even from his political opponents, but also so as to have rendered the people of his state conspicuous service in many important directions.

was natural that the percentage of lawyers among public officers, both elective and appointive, should decrease, the fact being merely evidence that the country is utilizing its best brains, wherever produced and found, whether in business or in the professions.

Neither of these men is a lawyer, and that fact is symptomatic of the change taking place in this country whereby the leof Alfred E. Smith of New York. inal primacy in public affairs. of Alfred E. Smith of New York. gal profession is losing its origIn either case the office with Such a process was inevitable; its honors and onerous duties with the development of Ameriwould have gone to one who in the can industry and commerce it best sense of the expression is a "self-made man." Neither Mr. Hoover nor Mr. Smith was born with a silver spoon in his mouth; neither had behind him at the beginning of his career the advantage of family fortune or family influence. Mr. Hoover secured by his own efforts a formal education superior to that And yet the purely personal secured by Mr. Smith, and ul- success both of Mr. Hoover and timately, through his engineer- of Mr. Smith surely is an incening training and his native abil- tive to all law students, particuity, acquired a large fortune and larly those who like the two secured an experience in hand- candidates possess no family inling large affairs which for the fluence or fortune. If Gov. Smith past ten years and more he has could climb so high without devoted not to his own interests even a common school educabut to those of the public here tion, surely one who has enjoyed and abroad. Mr. Smith, without the advantages of a legal traineven the advantage of a com- ing can aspire to an equal deplete common school education, gree of success in professional has progressed from a start life, provided only he will make gained through machine politics due effort and not waste his opuntil he has held for five terms portunities. If Herbert Hoover the office of governor of the can have built so well on the

foundation of professional training, surely any young lawyer or law student can hope to build equally well on the foundation of the same type of training in another profession.

The careers of Mr. Hoover and Mr. Smith not only demonstrate that success can be achieved by individual effort; they also demonstrate that such successmaking effort, or rather the capacity for it, in itself amounts to genius.

The race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong. In the run of years the man with noth- The man who has a plan of ing but his own abilities serious- life before him and who directs ly applied to a definite end is his whole efforts to its ends will bound to overcome in any field almost certainly achieve what he of human endeavor the man who sets out to accomplish. If your starts with an advantage but in- aim is to be a successful lawyer stead of utilizing it relies too ex--and you should not be in law clusively upon it. Whatever may be said about the concentration of wealth, it remains a fact that at least in this country the great prizes of the professions open not to money but to the key of individual ability and effort.

An English county court judge make some mistake in the oath, recently remarked that he would which was certainly of a somewhat like to see the oath abolished. intricate and complicated character. "When there is a crowded court,' In different lands, of course, the he said, "people gabble it off one oath is administered in various after another. It is irreligious and ways. No oath in the world, for undignified. If witnesses are go- instance, can compare with that ading to lie, they will do so whether ministered in Norway. "If I swear the oath is taken or not." There is falsely," exclaims the Norwegian little doubt, of course, that many witness, "may all I have and own strange pictures are conjured up in be cursed; cursed be my land, field the mental vision of those of an and meadow, so that I may never observant turn of mind-an almost enjoy any fruit or yield from indecent gabbling of the solemn them; cursed be my cattle, my words, an irreverent handling of beasts, my sheep, so that after this the Book, and then a perfunctory day they may never thrive or bene"kissing" which is anything but fit me; yea, cursed may I be and ardent and sincere and in many everything that I possess." In Italy cases perhaps quite meaningless. the witness has an open Bible lying There is the pretty person, too, before him. The oath he takes is who forgets to take off her glove, simple: "I swear to tell the truth, and who becomes covered with the whole truth and nothing but the confusion in struggling rather truth." The Belgian witness adds tremblingly with a button that will to this the words: "So help me not be coerced into giving way. God and all the Saints." No Bible When at length the glove has been is, however, employed in the Belremoved, she takes the Testament gian oath. In the oath as adminin her dainty fingers and imprints istered in the Scottish courts there upon it what is as much a caress is added the words: "Almighty as a kiss. Then there is the man, God" "and as I shall answer to who listens to the jangle of the Him at the last day of judgment." oath as it is administered with In Spanish courts the taking of the rather ill-concealed impatience, and oath is accomplished by the witthen opens the Book at a clean nesses going down on the right page, and kisses the inside with the knee and placing their hands on the view of avoiding microbes. Again, open Bible. The question is put: there is the wily coster, who man- "Will you swear by God and the ages to kiss his thumb instead of Holy Gospels that you will speak the Book in order that his evidence the truth in answer to whatever may be given without disturbing questions you may be asked?" The his conscience. Fortunately, of witness answers: "I do, sir!" He course, it is clearly established that is then told: "If you tell the truth,

so long as the oath is binding, there is no protection to the person who makes statements which he knows to be false, although there are still people that believe it is beyond the limits of the law to prosecute them for perjury if they hold the Testament in a gloved hand.

There are few, of course, that would support the abolition of the oath as regards the procedure in an English Court of Justice. It is obviously the oldest thing in English judicial procedure. In the earliest form of criminal trial, for instance, there was always some sort of appeal to God. It might be represented by "the ordeal" or the simple process of calling on the accused to swear to his innocence and to get a sufficient number of his friends to swear with him. The principle, however, was similar. There was a belief that Divine intervention would cause a guilty man to fail in the ordeal, or to

God will reward you. If you do not tell the truth, He will requite you." In all civilized countries the witness takes the oath with bared head. There is only one exception to this practice. Jews everywhere claim the right of wearing a hat while addressing the Deity. The Jew has no special oath, however, but uses that of the country in which he resides.

It is commonly believed that the breaking of a saucer or the extinguishing of a candle are part of the Chinese forms of taking an oath. These two ceremonies, nevertheless, were originally invented by Englishmen and are apparently not in vogue in the Chinese courts. The principal and most binding form of oath among the Chinese, indeed, consists of the wringing of a chicken's neck. This is, nevertheless, only one of the many strange means of strengthening testimony employed in the East, a variation

among the Nagas of Assam being to chop in two a fowl held by the

head and feet, this being emblem

atic of the fate expected to befall a perjurer.

Another solemn method of asseveration which obtained in lawsuits between Russians and wild Ostyaks in Siberia was for the head of a bear to be brought into court and the Ostyak to make gestures representative of eating and at the same time to call on the bear to devour him in like manner if he should not tell the truth.

Touching a sacred object, even if not the Scriptures, seems in fact

to be a world-wide method of oath

taking. Even the Somali, for instance, have a special sacred stone and observe a very beautiful ceremony. One party says: "God is before us, and this stone is from Amr Bur," naming a fabulous and hallowed mountain. The other party, receiving the stone, says: "I shall not lie in this agreement, and therefore take this stone from you."

The English ceremony of oathtaking is in reality a pagan one in disguise. The verb "to Swear" takes us back in fact to pre-Christian days when a man's strength and his sword were those of his master. To swear was a vow to Heaven upon a sword. The word "to swear," of course, is very closely related to the word "sword" and the very essence of swearing, deep down in the root form of the thing and the word itself, is to take one's sword in one's right hand and fight for one's side with an energy that will make the pagan gods shout for joy in Valhalla.

The exact origin of the custom

To be betrayed and sold like Christ.

These lines are somewhat conclusive evidence that in 1660, in the common form of oath, the practice was for the witness to lay his hands upon the Bible and afterwards to kiss it. There is, of

course, the view of the folklorist

that this practice is akin to what might be described as a "saliva" custom, and that a little research alone is needed to show that the fundamental idea of all rites relating to saliva seems to be a desire for union in some way or other with the Divinity. In modern

western life these saliva customs

exist in only a very few forms, but

it will be observed that it is still customary for many of the lower classes to expectorate upon a coin "for luck."

The oath, with uplifted hand, appears in any case to be incomparably older than the mere kissing of the Testament. Although there are

some that maintain the hand of the

witness was originally uplifted to show that he had no weapon about him, there seems to be little doubt for holding the sounder view that the hand was really uplifted in appeal to the Deity. In this way did the Greeks lift their hands at the altars of their gods when they made sacrifices. In similar fashion was the oath of Wodin adminis

tered in the Orkneys by two per

most natural and solemn attitudes

of early man.

of "kissing the book" in English Courts of Law is somewhat obscure. It is not without point, how-sons joining their hands through ever, to observe that in Catholic the hole in the ring-stone of Stencountries the priest still kisses the nis. So also Aaron "lifted up his Gospel after he has read it, and, hand toward the people." And it of course, much could be written is no stretch of the imagination to as to the ultimate origin of kissing suppose the lifting of the hands to as a sign and pledge of truth. The the sun to have been one of the perjury of Judas was signed by a kiss, and Jacob deceived his father with the same pledge of truth. There are many, nevertheless, who hold that it did not become a recognized practice in the English courts until the middle of the seventeenth century, and that it only became general in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Shakespeare certainly notices the practice in "The Tempest" about 1613. He gives Stephano, when offering Caliban the bottle, these lines: "Come, swear to this; kiss the book." And a few lines later Caliban says: "I'll kiss thy foot; I'll swear myself thy subject." Again,'

Whatever its form, there can be no doubt that the taking of an oath has always been regarded by most men as a grave matter. Few are ashamed of telling an occasional "white lie," but there is no such thing as "white perjury." The oath certainly reminds each and all of us that a lie told in a court of justice is a grave crime in the sight of the law, and, if we possess any religious sense, a grave sin in the sight of God. If it induces only a few witnesses to tell the truth who otherwise would have lied, the oath is justified.