Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1973
Publication Information
49 Notre Dame Law. 214 (1973).
Abstract
These are curious times for American legal education, especially curious perhaps at this university law school, because we claim adherence to the traditions of Thomas More. Our profession has for more than two centuries provided rulers for America, as it provided leaders, including More himself, for More's England—presidents and speakers, senators and administrators, benign manipulators in American corridors of power. More than a few of America's lawyer leaders have been educated at Christian, university law schools, and, as I think about Notre Dame law students this summer, I hope we are educating more than a few replacements for the lawyer-leaders of 1973.
American lawyers seem lately to have provided the nation with too many scoundrels; without prejudging matters of fact in Washington, D.C., this summer, the general impression is that too many of the lawyers who lead America ignore Bracton's landmark for lawyers in government—Rex non debit esse sub homine, sed sub Deo et sub lege, quia lex facit regem. (The king is under no man, yet he is in subjection to God and to the law, for the law makes the king.) The dreary discoveries of 1973 become more sobering when I reflect that many of the lawyers who seemed to forget principle were trained in Christian university law schools. I feel compelled to begin this report to you with what seems a remote and melancholy concern, because failure among the lawyers who lead America cannot be unimportant at Notre Dame; if it is, the sacrifices we make to have a law school here are wasted sacrifices. We lay special claim to moral concern and to compassion in leadership, and we pay an awesome price for the privilege. The summer's recitals from Washington are an inevitable counterpoint to the annual renewal of witness in our law school. And they are a terrible challenge to our mission as educators of lawyers and of leaders.
Recommended Citation
Thomas L. Shaffer,
Report of the Dean 1972-1973,
49 Notre Dame Law. 214 (1973)..
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/936
Comments
Reprinted with permission of Notre Dame Law Review (previously Notre Dame Lawyer).