First Page
125
Abstract
We need not worry about the lawyer's response to the need for stability in the law. The average lawyer is a conservative chap who does not favor change unless the need for it has been proved to the hilt.Nor need we tender full apologies for this hardheaded attitude, for,as Judge Cardozo once said, "certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly to be sacrificed. Above all is this true when honest men have shaped their conduct upon the faith of the pronouncement." At times, however, we have allowed these considerations, important as they are, to outweigh even more compelling reasons for change. And at times there has been foolish resistance in some quarters to experimentation designed to test the value of suggested changes...
If we are seeking better methods for serving our clients, we have not succeeded in letting the public know about it. Nor, if we believe existing procedures to be modem and adequate, have we persuaded our clients that this is so.The truth is that much of our law, both substantive and procedural,is as antiquated as the Model T Ford. But it is also true that substantial segments of our profession have been and are striving to modernize and make more uniform our case and statute law as well as our rules of procedure.
Recommended Citation
Orison S. Marden,
The Lawyer's Response to the Demand for Both Stability and Change Through Law,
17 Vanderbilt Law Review
125
(1963)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol17/iss1/8