t is nothing but a game of wits, of cunning, and of
concealment, promoted by the rules of procedure. I think this
characterization is most unjust and most unwise because it aids the
attack on a valuable and indispensable institution without suggesting
any real security for such evils and defects as there are. An experience
of many years in the trial of all sorts of causes as lawyer and judge
and in framing a judicial system convinces me that the present method of
hearing causes is correct. The enthusiastic advocacy of counsel when
they are properly restrained as above suggested, and the rules of
evidence adapted to winnowing out the false from the true, are admirably
adapted to bringing about right results.

It is also asked whether members of the Bar live up to these rules
restraining their enthusiasm and limiting their proper conduct in the
advocacy of their clients' causes. One can reply that counsel differ in
that regard, but that generally such rules are fairly well observed. The
earnestness of advocacy often blinds them to the proprieties and the
requirements of candor and fairness. They fall into the same errors that
their clients do, though with a better knowledge of their duties in this
regard. They share what has been characteristic of our entire people in
the last two decades. The minds of the great majority have been focused
on business success, on the chase for the dollar, where success seems to
have justified some departure from the strict line of propriety or
fairness, so long as it has not brought on criminal prosecution or
public denunciation.

More than this, the tendency of legislatures, too often controlled by
lawyers engaged in active practice, has been to distrust judges and to
take away from them the power to control in the court room, as they do
in the English and Federal courts. This has had a tendency to transfer
to counsel greater discretion in respect to their conduct of cases and
greater opportunity to depart from ethical rules with impunity in the
somewhat reckless spirit of the times. The hampered power of the court
to prevent the misconduct of counsel in many western states has not been
conducive to certainty of justice nor has it been of a character to
strengthen public confidence in just results. We find the bitterest
attacks upon the administration of justice in those jurisdictions in
which the people and the legislatures have themselves laid the
foundation for the very abuses they su