Law Forum Looks Hard for Role Of Organized Bar in Social Reform

Five lawyers and law professors spoke around the subject of "The Organized Bar and Social Reform" at the Law School Eorum last night. The only matter of widespread agreement seemed to be that the organized bar doesn't really have very much to do directly with social reform.

In a jocular mood, Louis L. Jaffe, Byrne Professor of Law, the moderator, opened the meeting by raising the question of whether lawyers are conservative and opposed to legal reform.

Humor persisted. Dean Eriwn N. Griswold of the Law School, the first speaker, who announced that he was going to exhaust the topic, explained that lawyers as individual citizens are active in social reform and that the bar associations are often involved in legal reform.

He did not, however, see much direct relation between the organizations and social reform, and concluded that as members of bar associations lawyers can "participate in law reform and even from time to time (although I'm not quite sure what that means) social reform."

The same doubts seemed to plague the other speakers, and they too tended to discuss law reform when they discussed reforms at all. The most serious point in the evening came when Morris Ernst, a New York civil rights lawyer, called upon the "legal establishment" to act in the face of threats to due process.

He said hat the people "have taken to the streets and are using muscle" because "they feel the courts have failed them." He pointed to the refusal of the most prominant lawyers to accept unpopular or criminal cases as the reason that people have chosen demonstrations to achieve their goals, as in the recent teacher strikes for higher pay.

Ernst appealed to the lawyers, as the only group able to accomplish the job, to lead the people back to the courts and reason. The same professional pride was evident in the speeches of the other two men, Walter E. Craig, president of the American Bar Association, and Vern Countryman, visiting professor of Law.

Craig said lawyers, through their associations, are especially qualified to promote social reform, especially by promoting order. Freely admitting his depature from the topic, Countryman emphasized the lawyer's "special competency" for a conservative role in the legal system.