Advocate

“ For without a free and honourable race of advocates the world will hear little of the message of justice. Advocacy is the outward and visible appeal for the spiritual gift of justice. The advocate is the priest in the temple of justice, trained in the mysteries of the creed, active in its exercises. ”

“ When this advocate perceives the eye of the mind turned inward, she endeavours to elude its pursuit, but if she finds it bent on resolute search, she casts obstacles before it, spreads a veil over what it seeks to investigate, softens errors into virtues, speaks of crimes as inadvertencies, and endeavours to blind the eye of reason the judge, and to silence the voice of conscience the accuser. ”

“ The advocacy which consists of professional self-display is exhibited genially, humorously, an advocacy horn-eyed to the truth of its own case, to every truth, indeed, save one—that which commends the advocate himself, his ingenious wit, and his flowers of rhetoric. The criminal is allowed his due portion of veracity and his fragment of truth—"What shall a man give for his life?" ”

“ When an advocate handles a cause, which it is his duty to gain for his client, we know, that he brings forward every fact, and urges every argument, that tends to support the positions on which his cause hinges, sedulously masking every circumstance that contravenes his statement, and avoiding every suggestion that weakens his reasoning upon it. ”

“ But here is an advocate without us, in heaven and with the Father. The proper office and business of an advocate is with the judge; with him he pleads the client's cause. The Judge with whom our advocate pleads is the Father, his Father and ours. ”

“ The judge weighs the arguments, and puts a brave face on the matter, and, since there must be a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice, and given satisfaction to the community; but is only an advocate after all. And so is all life a timid and unskilful spectator. ”

“ Many men have found it so engrossing that it has become the one subject of their lives whether in the Court House or at home—they have thought and spoken nothing but law, they have taken law as their familiar communing with it day and night, they have parted with it only at their latest breath. You will soon find yourselves brought face to face with that curious ethical problem which has staggered the best and the wisest, and which every lawyer must solve for himself. How far is an advocate justified in pleading, or bound to plead, a cause which he believes or knows to be wrong? ”

“ Moreover, an advocate, while he pleads for the life or the liberty of a client, may not merely feel himself free, but bound, to use every means, to accomplish his object, even though some of them may be tortuous or equivocal. Nay, it may become a point of honour to conceal or perplex the true, and attempt to establish the false. ”

“ As an advocate he adheres to a clear and concise discussion of the law principles and facts strictly within the record of the case, and rarely, if ever, embellishes or adorns his argument by figures of speech or illustrations foreign to the subject. ”

“ Threeper the advocate, a gentleman of long standing and great practice in the Parliament House, and much celebrated for his shrewd perception of technical flaws, and clever discrimination of those nicer points of the law that are so often at variance with justice. ”

“ Let no one think that he can attain to sound judgment without hard work. The judgment of the advocate must be based on the maxim, “He that judges without informing himself to the utmost that he is capable cannot acquit himself of judging amiss.”
A client is entitled to the independent judgment of the advocate. Whether his judgment is right or wrong, it is the duty of the advocate to place it at the disposal of his client. In the business of advocacy judgment is the goods that the advocate is bound to deliver. ”

“ Within these limits, it is conceived there is range enough for the exercise of all the reason of the advocate and the judge, without unsettling everything and depriving the conduct of human affairs of all guidance from human authority;—and the talents of our lawyers and courts find sufficient exercise in applying the principles of one case to the facts of another.—American Editor. ”

“ Being more adapted to the part of a jurist than an advocate, owing to the striking uprightness of his character, he applied himself to this branch of his profession, and it may truly be said that his vivid sense of truth and justice had much to do with his effectiveness as a jurist. ”

“ If the promotion of the interest of the client were an advocate's highest duty, it would be another name for the exactest virtue; and inasmuch as that interest is not, like the objects of zeal, fixed in character, but liable to frequent change, the faculty of directing the whole power of the understanding to each shifting aspect of the cause in its minutest shadowings without the guidance of an inflexible law, is far more wonderful, if far less noble, than a singleness of devotion to right. ”

“ An advocate is as one of our attorneys, at least in the general, who pleads according to law and justice for one or other that is in trouble by reason of some miscarriage, or of the naughty temper of some that are about him, who trouble and vex, and labour to bring him into danger of the law. This is the nature of this office, as I said, on earth; and this is the office that Christ executeth in heaven. Wherefore he saith, “If any man sin, we have an Advocate”; one to stand up for him, and to plead for his deliverance before the bar of God. ”

“ If the advocate refuses to defend, from what he may think of the charge or of the defence, he assumes the character of the judge; nay, he assumes it before the hour of judgment; and, in proportion [32] to his rank and reputation, puts the heavy influence of perhaps a mistaken opinion into the scale against the accused, in whose favour the benevolent principle of English law makes all presumptions, and which commands the very judge to be his counsel. ”

“ For an advocate needs to have both interior skill so that he may be able to prove the justice of the cause he defends, and also speech and hearing, that he may speak and hear what is said to him. Consequently those who are defective in these points, are altogether debarred from being advocates either in their own or in another's cause. ”

“ Let me add what experience, that unerring guide, has taught me: it has frequently been my province to act both as an advocate and a judge; and I have often also attended as an assessor. [21] Upon those occasions, I have ever found the judgments of mankind are to be influenced by different modes of application, and that the slightest circumstances frequently produce the most important consequences. The dispositions and understandings of men vary to such an extent that they seldom agree in their opinions concerning any one point in debate before them ”

“ In Justice the young advocate who appears for the defence is not so much pleading for the client under the law, as arraigning the present legal system, setting up a new conception of law based upon common sense, human insight, and a morality finer than legalism. ”

“ The advocate's duty to his client, with its resulting risk to the advocate's own conscience, is thus set forth:—
"Justice is found, experimentally, to be most effectually promoted by the opposite efforts of practised and ingenious men presenting to the selection of an impartial judge the best arguments for the establishment and explanation of truth. It becomes, then, under such an arrangement, the decided duty of an advocate to use all the arguments in his power to defend the cause he has adopted, and to leave the effects of those arguments to the judgment of others. ”

“ We find illustrations of much the same kind in the profession of an advocate. In the interests of the proper administration of justice it is of the utmost importance that every cause, however defective, and every criminal, however bad, should be fully defended, and it is therefore indispensable that there should be a class of men entrusted with this duty. It is the business of the judge and of the jury to decide on the merits of the case, but in order that they should discharge this function it is necessary that the arguments on both sides should be laid before them in the strongest form. ”

“ An advocate must study his brief in the same way that an actor studies his [40] part. Success in advocacy is not arrived at by intuition. Mr. O’Brien, in his excellent biography of Charles Russell, details an interesting conversation with his hero which enforces this truth. He had raised the question of an advocate succeeding by mere intuition in picking up the threads of a case in court, when Russell interrupted him in a characteristic phrase. ”

“ The experienced advocate can look back upon those less advanced in years or experience, and rest content in the thought that they are just so many cases behind him; that if he keeps on, with equal opportunities in court, they can never overtake him. ”

“ The advocates of society, like the people's advocates, are disciplined in the practice of truth and justice, and if they think that there is anything in the case in favour of the appellant they are honourably bound to state it to the tribunal. ”

“ As you are neither learned nor sufficiently instructed in letters or in the difficult matters which are to be discussed, to take counsel of yourself, touching what you should do or reply, we offer you to choose as your advocate one or more of those present, as you will. ”

“ No advocate is admitted in petty courts, small towns, or villages; where the poverty of the people, and, for the most part, the low value of the matter contested, make despatch absolutely necessary. In those places the parties shall appear in person, and the judge make a summary decision. ”

“ If I have a good point, it is that I can see quickly the hinge on which the whole case turns, and I never lose sight of it. But that is not intuition, my friend; it is work.’”
Industry in reading and book-learning may make a man a good jurist, but the advocate must exercise his industry in [42] the double art of speaking and arranging his thoughts in ordered speech. ”

“ What an advocate needs first is thorough knowledge of law, and that adaptiveness and readiness of faculty which are never surprised into forgetfulness or confusion, so that he can instantly see, meet, reason upon, and apply his legal learning to the unexpected as well as the expected points of law and evidence as they arise in a case. ”

“ The successful promoted advocate, who in Britain and the United States of America is the judge, and whose habits and interests all incline him to disregard the realities of the case in favour of the points in the forensic game, then adjudicates upon the contest. ”

“ If this is so, how important is it for those who are busily engaged with men with whom they must often deal at first sight; how important for the physician, the divine advocate, or the counsel examining witnesses and watching the countenances of juries, to have some rules and signs to aid their acute judgments. ”

“ He leaves no man reasonable choice but to agree with him. He is a sworn advocate. His essay is his brief. If he be a man of force, his cause is won before the jurymen take their places. Be sure he will prove his point before any just judge. ”

“ This is not so necessary in another advocate. Another advocate (or an advocate in another court) may be an unjust person himself, and yet may have a just cause (and the cause of a just person in that case) to plead, and may accordingly carry his cause. But here the clients are guilty; their innocence and legal righteousness cannot be pleaded; their sin must be confessed or supposed. It is the advocate's own righteousness that he must plead for the criminals. He has been righteous to the death, righteous for them; he has brought in everlasting righteousness. ”

“ True, these figures of forgotten advocates are dim and obscure—only to be painfully seen through the dusty gauzes of forgotten years, pictured for us in drowsy voluminous memoirs, or baldly reported in mouldering law reports; but if we search these records diligently we gradually discern a race of worthy men—see them haunting the old libraries, pacing the ancient halls with their clients, proud of the traditions of their great profession—advocates—advocates all. ”

“ They indisputably require eloquent advocates and keen attorneys;—who expound, complicate, unriddle, or confuse, the respective statutes, points, precedents, and practice, of that simple science, which too frequently, like a burning-glass, consumes both sides of what it shines upon. ”

“ ADVOCATES. I ought to mention that there are advocates selected by the State from amongst the most eloquent and able men, charged specially to bring before the proper tribunals every case where any persons, men or women, think themselves wronged. There are also able men, advocates to represent the interests of society. ”

“ The tribunals, in former times, when good taste prevailed, were greatly adorned by our advocates, when orators of spirited eloquence—laborious and accomplished scholars—shone pre-eminent in genius, honesty, fluency, and every kind of embellishment of language. ”

“ When advocates are too numerous to live by honest practice, they busy themselves in exciting disputes, and disturbing the community: the number of these to be employed in each court is, therefore, fixed. ”

“ The head-men sit in judgment, and substantial justice is generally done. There are persons, celebrated for their power and copiousness of talking, who appear as counsel in behalf of the respective parties. The more distinguished of these advocates are sometimes sent for, from a distance of two or three hundred miles, to speak at a palaver ”

“ Prominent advocates in every age have, while developing their powers, made it a practise to propose a case similar to those brought in the courts, and to make arguments thereon as nearly as possible as they would were it an actual case in court. ”