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Title: Ethics in Service

Author: William Howard Taft

Release Date: December 9, 2006 [EBook #20066]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ETHICS IN SERVICE

BY
William Howard Taft

Addresses Delivered in the Page Lecture
Series, 1914, before the Senior Class of the
Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University

[Illustration: Yale University Press Crest]

NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
MDCCCCXV

Copyright, 1915
By Yale University Press

First printed October, 1915, 1000 copies

PREFACE

The legal profession discharges a most important function in a civilized
community, and it seems to me that a discussion of the ethics and ideals
of that profession would come within the purpose of the Page foundation,
which is described by the donor as intended to promote "the ethical side
of business life, including the morals and ethics of public service." I
shall first ask your attention to the history of the profession, which
shows that a paid advocacy is the only practical system, and to the
rules of conduct to which lawyers must be held in order that such a
system shall promote justice. I cannot claim to have any peculiar
knowledge upon this subject other than that derived from a somewhat
brief practice of five years at the Bar, from an experience of eleven
years on the Bench of trial and appellate courts, from a somewhat varied
experience in the responsibility of government, not only in this
country, but in those far-distant isles of the Pacific in which the
United States has been grafting the principles of free government upon a
civilization inherited from Spain.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. History of the Profession of Law. 1

II. Legal Ethics 19

III. The