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The Green Bag
Association Code. The New York State Bar Association in January of this year adopted the following resolutions:— "Resolved, That the Court of Appeals be respectfully requested to amend its rules for the admission of attorneys and counselors at law by adding to rule 1 thereof the following:— "Each applicant for admission to practice as aforesaid shall be required to state in the affidavit filed by him on his application for admission that he has read the canons of professional ethics adopted by the New York Bar Association and has faithfully endeavored to make himself acquainted with the same, and that he will endeavor to conform his pro fessional conduct thereto. "Be it further resolved, That the State Board of Law Examiners be requested to examine on said canons of professional ethics all applicants applying to it for admission to the bar, and that the faculties of all law schools within this state be requested to teach the subject of professional ethics. "Be it further resolved. That the secretary of the Association be directed to send a certi fied copy of these resolutions to each judge of the Court of Appeals, to each member of the State Board of Law Examiners, and to the deans and faculties of each law school in the state." Having called attention to the reasons which led the American Bar Association to adopt canons of professional ethics, I now wish to present to you a short statement of the way the Association's committee did its work. That Com mittee consisted of Messrs. Henry St. George Tucker, of Virginia, chairman; Lucien Hugh Alexander, of Pennsyl vania, secretary; David J. Brewer, of the District of Columbia; Frederick V. Brown, of Minnesota; J. M. Dickinson, of Illinois; Franklin Ferriss, of Missouri; William Wirt Howe, of Louisiana, Thomas H. Hubbard, of New York; James G. Jenkins, of Wisconsin; Thomas Goode Jones, of Alabama; Alton B. Parker, of New York; George R. Peck, of Illinois; Francis Lynde Stetson, of New York; and Ezra R. Thayer, of Massachusetts; and it went about its
work, as a committee of such ability would, in a thoroughly business-like manner. In the first place it found that codes of ethics had already been adopted in the eleven following states on the dates specified respectively: Alabama, December 14, 1887; Georgia, May 9, 1889; Virginia, July 24, 1889; Michigan, June 30, 1897; Colorado, July 6, 1898; North Carolina, June 28, 1900; Wiscon sin, February 13, 1901; West Virginia, February 12, 1902; Maryland, July 2, 1902; Kentucky, July 2, 1903; Missouri, September 28, 1906. The Committee thereupon proceeded to make a com pilation of these state bar association codes, the later ones being based upon, but modifying in various ways, the first code, that of Alabama. Then, as the Alabama code was based very largely on Sharswood's little book on Legal Ethics, the Committee succeeded in getting copies of Sharswood's book dis tributed to the Association's members. With the compilation of the state bar association codes, the Committee printed Hoffman's famous Fifty Resolutions in Regard to Professional Deportment and some other information. Having made the compilation and distributed Shars wood's book on Professional Ethics, the Committee asked for another year in which to make a final report and pro ceeded to send out appeals for sugges tions for the Code. Those appeals re ceived many responses, and it is because I was one of those to respond that I felt bound to address you this evening, after Judge Frost astonished me by making and getting carried at your last meeting a motion that I do so. My contribution to the Code was slight, but has carried with it certain obligations. In general, the provisions of the state bar association codes already in existence satisfied me, but they were poorly arranged, contained
