Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Indiana State Bar Association (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS Our Profession Elmer E. Stevenson Members of the Indiana State Bar Association: My subject has great scope. My purpose is to deal with some practical phases of the law and the lawyer and his work. May I paint briefly the picture as it appears to me. The law is the calling of thinkers and particularly reas- oners. The quality of the thinking and the reasoning differs but the processes are the same. Other callings require intense thinking and even reasoning to some extent but in no other are the two combined to such a degree. The training and work of the lawyer call for the detection of the true and proper relations of things that concern human affairs, the sifting of truth from falsehood and the establishment and maintenance of what the people through their laws recognize as good and right. Says Justice Holmes: "And what a profession it is! No doubt everything is interesting when it is understood and seen in its connection with the rest of things. Every calling is great when greatly pursued. But what other gives such scope to realize the spontaneous energy of one's soul? In what other does one plunge so deep in the stream of life?so share its passions, its battles, its despair, its triumphs, both as witness and actor?" And if you please, what other calling takes one into fields from which roads lead one where he will and to every sphere of life's action? All human law is based on reason?faulty sometimes, but cleared in time by the gladsome light of jurisprudence. Sir Edward Coke says: "Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law is nothing else but reason?the law which is the perfection of reason.'' Law is a living science, an elemental need to govern the relations between you and me so that we may live a...