Doctor of Civil Law

“ BAUM. At Hamilton College, to fawn upon; to flatter; to court the favor of any one.
B.C.L. Abbreviated for Baccalaureus Civilis Legis, Bachelor in Civil Law. In the University of Oxford, a Bachelor in Civil Law must be an M.A. and a regent of three years' standing. The exercises necessary to the degree are disputations upon two distinct days before the Professors of the Faculty of Law. ”

“ Moreover, one of the chief functions of the universities is the preparation of future state officials. Legislative activity is distinctly subordinate to that of administration conducted by a trained civil service, or, if you please, bureaucracy. Membership in this bureaucracy is dependent upon university training. Philosophy, both directly and indirectly, plays an unusually large rôle in the training. The faculty of law does not chiefly aim at the preparation of practicing lawyers. Philosophies of jurisprudence are essential parts of the law teaching ”

“ Mention has just been made of the fact that even from the lowest Court of Law in Holland the amateur judge is rigidly excluded. No one who has not acquired the diploma of Doctor of Laws from one of the Dutch Universities is allowed to assume any responsible duty associated with the administration of justice. The same severe requirement is imposed upon the legal profession in general. The possession of the diploma of Doctor of Laws and Letters alone entitles a man to practise as advocate. ”

“ The fact that a student of the common law proposes to devote a number of years to the study of the civil law is a significant one in its bearing on legal education. It may be that the civil law has been too long neglected.
The students of the Harvard Law School claim domiciles in twenty-eight different jurisdictions. If they practise in the same jurisdictions from which they come, the Massachusetts bar, already so largely made up of Law School bred men, will receive 82 additions. ”

“ Form these habits now: learn all that may be learned at your University, and bring all your acquisitions and your habits to the study of the law, which you say is to be your profession;—and when you come to this study, come resolved to master it—not to play in its shallows, but to sound all its depths. There is no knowing what a mind greatly and firmly resolved, may achieve in this department of science, as well as every other. Resolve to be the first lawyer of your age, in the depth, extent, variety and accuracy of your legal learning. ”

“ A knowledge of the Civil Law never comes into requisition. There was a proposal, some short time ago, for a statute requiring an examination in the Institutes, &c., Heineccius, and other treatises on the Civil Law, before proceeding to that degree, but it was never passed. The civilian's fees are rather more than the Artist's. For information on some other minute particulars of difference, I refer J. F. to the Oxford Calendar. ”

“ The court found that 'The most extensive activities of the State Bar are those directed toward postgraduate education of lawyers,' and that 'Post-graduate education of lawyers is in the public interest because it promotes the competency of lawyers to handle the legal matters entrusted to them by those of the general public who employ them.' 10 Wis.2d at page 246, 102 N.W.2d at pages 412-413. ”

“ The great object of a Faculty of Law is to teach those who aspire to take part in public life jurisprudence, not as the art of jurisdiction, but in its connection with moral and social sciences, in its philosophical and historical aspect. In this relation, besides a Chair of PubHc Law, Chairs of Philosophy of Law, of Political Economy, of Commercial and of International Law, are necessary. They presuppose, of course, that the student has in the Faculty of Arts been well trained in the method of historical inquiry from a sociological point of view, and has had a sound general education. ”

“ They, constituting the University, are the "hope of the State in the direction of its practical affairs; in teaching the lawyer the better standards of his profession, his duty to place character above money making; in teaching the legislator the philosophy of legislation, and that the constructive forces of legislation carefully considered should precede every effort to change an existing status ”

“ A State can require high standards of qualification, such as good moral character or proficiency in its law, before it admits an applicant to the bar, but any qualification must have a rational connection with the applicant's fitness or capacity to practice law. ”

“ See lord Bacon's proposals and offer of a digest.
For I think it is past dispute that those gentlemen, who resort to the inns of court with a view to pursue the profession, will find it expedient (whenever it is practicable) to lay the previous foundations of this, as well as every other science, in one of our learned universities. We may appeal to the experience of every sensible lawyer, whether any thing can be more hazardous or discouraging than the usual entrance on the study of the law. ”

“ Candidates for the bar ordinarily prepared for practice by reading in a lawyer's office, a good old method that perhaps has some merits, but one which did not, save in the case of a teacher of exceptional qualifications, give a uniform preparation or an insight into the principles of legal philosophy. As the general level of education advanced, however, the advantages of some systematic instruction in law became more and more apparent, and it was not long after the establishment of the University before demands for a Law School began to be heard. ”

“ When we study law we are not studying a mystery but a well-known profession. We are studying what we shall want in order to appear before judges, or to advise people in such a way as to keep them out of court. The reason why it is a profession, why people will pay lawyers to argue for them or to advise them, is that in societies like ours the command of the public force is intrusted to the judges in certain cases, and the whole power of the state will be put forth, if necessary, to carry out their judgments and decrees. ”

“ If I am not in error, an attorney is as much an officer of the court as the clerk, and it would be a novel thing in a government to have a court to administer law which denied the supremacy of the government itself. ”

“ But, in the first place, it must be remembered that the judges are selected from the ranks of the profession, and that in the long run their views upon the importance of constitutional law, and their sense of the great responsibility of their position, must be derived mainly from the profession in which they were bred. It is not, however, only as the great mother of judges that the legal profession is involved in this responsibility. Every lawyer may become engaged in suits turning upon points of constitutional law. ”

“ The importance of lawyers as legislators and executives in the actual work of American government has been an indirect consequence of the peculiar function of the Supreme Court in the American political system. The state constitutions confer a corresponding function on the highest state courts, although they make no similar provision for the independence of the state judiciary. The whole business of American government is so entangled in a network of legal conditions that a training in the law is the beet education which an American public man can receive. ”

“ Witht his qualification, it is true that a judgment of a state court, which is put on independent nonfederal grounds broad enough to sustain it, cannot be reviewed by us. But the qualification is a material one and cannot be disregarded without neglecting or renouncing a jurisdiction conferred by law and designed to protect and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof. ”

“ To qualify for appointments as members of the Constitutional Court, members of the teaching staff shall be required to possess the title of professor or associate professor; lawyers shall be required to have practiced as a lawyer for at least twenty years; high level executives shall be required to have completed higher education and to have worked for at least twenty years in public service, and first category judges and public prosecutors with at least twenty years of work experience including their period of candidacy, provided that they all shall be over the age of forty five. ”

“ Surely a State is constitutionally entitled to make such an inquiry of an applicant for admission to a profession dedicated to the peaceful and reasoned settlement of disputes between men, and between a man and his government. The very Constitution that the appellants invoke stands as a living embodiment of that ideal.
As to Question 27, there can hardly be doubt of its constitutional validity in light of our earlier discussion of Rule 9406 and the appellees' construction of that Rule. ”

“ Measures shall be taken by law to promote the professionalism of judges, and the universities shall cooperate to this end, organizing their corresponding law schools' pensa to specialized studies in judicial practice. ”

“ I had always thought that in this country a recourse to law was the most popular of remedies, but certainly the study of it seems to occupy the attention of very few students, for only one Degree has been conferred in that Faculty. ”

“ It is not too much to say that the profession of the law is more or less on trial. It is certain that there is a crisis in the life of our courts, and that a great political issue is being forced upon the people, for they must decide whether the courts are to continue to exercise the power they now have, and what character of service they shall be required to render. Judges are lawyers. They ought to be trained practitioners and learned in the profession of the law before they ascend the Bench, and generally they are. ”

“ Great as is the influence which the profession of the law can and does exercise upon the legislation of a country, the actual administration of law is entirely in their hands. To a large extent by private counsel, by the publication of works of research and learning, by arguments in courts of justice to assist those who are to determine what is the law, and to apply it to the facts, as well as in the actual exercise of judicature, this whole important province of government, which comes home so nearly to every man's fireside, is intrusted necessarily to lawyers. ”

“ It is a matter of congratulation, too, that large success has attended the examination in Law, The Examination in Law. because the University examination in Law is not an examination in the knowledge which qualifies a man to be a successful practitioner,—it is not a knowledge of cases and decisions and practice—it is a knowledge of the principles of law and jurisprudence ”

“ From the beginning of their service, civilians are constantly doing judicial work, always criminal, generally civil. In the five-and-twenty years or so that pass before they are likely to enter a High or Chief Court, those who have any aptitude or inclination for legal studies have had abundant experience and have acquired a good stock of learning. Where there is a division between the executive and judicial branches, certain officers specialize almost exclusively. ”

“ About a thousand young men graduate yearly. Lawyers are bound to pass a certain examination before being admitted to practise at the bar; but it is of a very theoretical nature. The new law concerning the constitution of courts requires candidates for judgeships to pass two competitive examinations, unless they are graduates of the University, in which case they need only pass the second of the two, after having served as probationary judges for a term of three years. Judges are appointed for life ”

“ The benchers of the Inns of Court, until the revival towards the middle of the 19th century, had wholly ceased to concern themselves with the systematic teaching of law. The modern system of legal education may be said to date from the establishment, in 1852, of the council of legal education, a body of twenty judges and barristers appointed by the four Inns of Court to control the legal education of students preparing to be called to the bar. The most important feature is the examination which a student must pass before he can be called. ”

“ Hence it may be a measure of policy with them, to introduce the student, in the first place, to the study of political law, in the hope of making on his raw and unpractised mind, such an impression, as may secure his approbation of the existing order of things. The faculty of investigating legal questions, and forming legal opinions, may almost be regarded as an acquired faculty; so that, in the earlier part of his researches, the student necessarily acquiesces in the doctrines which are pronounced ex cathedra by his teacher. ”

“ An applicant for admission to practice law may justly be deemed to be aware of the traditions of the profession which he is joining, and to know that one of these traditions is that a lawyer is an officer of the court obligated to represent indigents for little or no compensation upon court order. ”

“ Consequently, it cannot make any similar reorganization in that college.
2. That, if a ministerial decision shall be dictated contrary to the sacred and inviolable law of the foundation of the college, the most efficacious legal means to oppose the violation of the same and obtain its observance by entreaty would be to bring an ordinary civil suit before the courts of common [331] law, but in order to free the road of the difficulties of this suit it would be advisable to try previously the contencioso-administrativo appeal, in the time and manner assigned by the law of September 13, 1888. ”