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Show LAWYERS WHO FATTEN ON CRIME. A Paris lawyer has been expelled from the bar because it leaked out that he had been employed, at a salary of $G,600 a year, to defend de-fend the organization of "apaches" or thugs vho so terrorized the city by their open outlawry. It would be a good thing for the legal profession, and for the cause of law and order generally if all lawyers who thus fatten on crime were to be repudiated. .Theoretically the principle is all right that no matter how bad an offense a culprit may be charged with he is entitled to be suitably defended in the courts. But nevertheless any lawyer who uses his talents to obstruct what he knows to be the true course of justice himself becomes an accessory to the offense. Lawyers are sworn officers of the court, with a semi-public semi-public status, and their mission is to aid justice, not to assist criminals to defeatjt. Yet many of the brightest men in the legal profession devote themselves to finding ways for their clients to break the laws and avoid the penalties. But after all this condition is not at all pe culiar to our times. The history of the law shows numberless instances of legal fictions and evasions invented by the lawyers to outwit the legislators and courts, and it is true that if it were not for the carping lawyers, justice would be even in a more demoralized states than it is now. " There is a line of propriety, however, which a lawyer should never cross, and it is the lawyers that cross this line who bring discredit dis-credit on the laws. |
