Fallen Tortes & Vicars
Ian Hunter on Canada’s Legal & Clerical Trials
There are ancient links between priest and lawyer, going back to the earliest development of the universities, when divinity and law were pinnacles of “science,” of scientia or knowledge. But today, lawyers are widely, and often deservedly, regarded as hired guns, shills for whatever purse can afford their services, while, by and large, clerics are utterly disregarded.
I wish to cast professional courtesy to the wind, and to say, as frankly as Jeremiah, what I think is the state of the law and the clergy, sketching my thesis only in broad brushstrokes.
Collapsing Pillars
The legal profession rests on three pillars, each of which is, I believe, in danger of collapse: the practicing bar, the law schools, and the judiciary.
First, the practicing bar. When I graduated from law school, the practice of law was regarded, at least by lawyers, as an honorable profession, not a business. A lawyer was obliged to exert his best effort on his client’s behalf, true enough; but he was also an officer of the court and, as such, constrained in what he could say or do. When did you last hear a lawyer called “an officer of the court”? A lawyer was then also required to be a champion of what were called—and today it sounds quaint—“the rules of natural justice.”
And where, pray, did the rules of natural justice come from? Why, from natural law, of course. True, natural law was not a formal part of the law-school curriculum, but the idea of natural law still held a place in our jurisprudence. Today, no law student ever hears of natural law, except perhaps as one of the superstitions of antiquity from which we have happily been liberated; indeed, only the fusty greybeards on the faculty have heard of natural law.
Mary Ann Glendon, in her incisive book A Nation Under Lawyers, quoted hard-headed -American legal realist Karl Llewellyn telling a 1960 University of Chicago graduating law class: “[You] must never lose sight of the fact that you are an officer of the court with special responsibility for the integrity of the legal system . . . your conscience, your God, your family, your partners, [and] your country.” Today, a speaker who uttered such words would be hooted from the stage.
Incidentally, Llewellyn concluded that same address by telling students that, at the end of their careers, the words they should most fear hearing are: “ Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,” the words that Daniel translated for King Nebuchadnezzar, informing the king that he had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. “When you die,” he concluded, “will you have left the law better or worse than you found it?” Anyone saying that to today’s graduating class would not only be speaking over their heads but would be accused of buffoonery.
Except on ceremonial occasions, the Canadian legal profession no longer pays even lip service to such ideals. Why is that? What has caused the change? Many things, I think, have contributed.
The loss of articling, where a student is mentored by a senior professional, is one; although a form of articling continues to exist, it is shadow without substance. Law firms now openly call themselves “businesses,” and in business the bottom line governs. Firms now have a Managing Partner responsible for the business. The concept of “billable hours” has trumped many old ideas, including mentorship.
Ian Hunter is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of biographies of Robert Burns, Hesketh Pearson, and Malcolm Muggeridge.
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