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6 - Toward a more morally responsive advocate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2009

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Summary

In 1927, Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School and later a justice of the United States Supreme Court, wrote to a Mr. Rosenwald regarding lawyers, law schools, and American society. For reasons not made clear, Frankfurter sought to counter Rosenwald's “skepticism as to the usefulness of legal research and legal education in furthering [the] purposes of a healthy and good American society.” Hoping to enlist Rosenwald's support for Harvard Law School and for the peace, justice, and prosperity that he associated with Harvard-trained lawyers, Frankfurter began his syllogistic response with: “The great, big fact about American national life which differentiates it from that of all Western countries (and of course, also, Eastern countries) is the part played in our affairs by lawyers. … ours is a legal society.” And what kind of lawyers do we need to meet the lofty and diverse challenges that Frankfurter assigns to them? “We must have law and lawyers … that are sensitive to the feelings and needs of the various ingredients that make the sum total of the American Nation, lawyers that are hard-headed without being hard, lawyers that are wise rather than smart.” Given the centrality of law and lawyers, how do we get these people “who have a wide outlook and an intimate familiarity with the conditions of modern life”? Frankfurter answers his own question: “In the last analysis, the law is what the lawyers are.

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Moral Vision and Professional Decisions
The Changing Values of Women and Men Lawyers
, pp. 156 - 171
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1989

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