Address by Commissioner Of Education Earl McGrath, The Humanities and the Law
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OCR Page 1 of 11THE HUMANITIES AND THE LAW*
The education of the young is an urgent problem in our unsettled
time. Imparting the knowledge and the skills essential to a thoughtful,
productive life has been a hard task in any age. But in this day when
the pace of living and the range of knowledge have increased so swiftly,
the job is most difficult. Yet it must be done. For in a society in
which each is privileged to play a part in the determination of public
policy, ignorance is a threat to the welfare of all. It is fitting and
timely, therefore, that the members of one of the learned professions
should here consider the values of general education to those who wish to
enter the legal profession.
General education may be defined as that type of education which
introduces the young to the common life of their time and their kind.
Hence it includes that fund of knowledge and beliefs and those habits of
language and thought which form the distinguishing features of our society.
It is the unifying element in our culture. It is the repository of our
common experience--moral, scientific, aesthetic, spiritual--ignorance
of which leaves men incapable of understanding themselves and the world
in which they live. General education should prepare the individual
for a full and satisfying life as a member of a family, as a citizen, and
as an integrated and purposeful human being.
If the citizen of today is to understand the nature of man and
of the world in which he lives, he must have at least an elementary
knowledge of the various branches of learning that we are discussing on
this occasion--the social sciences, the physical sciences, and the
humanities. For each of these disciplines embraces its own peculiar body
of knowledge, and its own variations in method. No one has made this
point more forcefully than Mr. Justice Story, when in his inaugural
address as Professor of Law at Harvard he said: "Many of our most
illustrious statesmen have been lawyers, but they have been lawyers
liberalized by philosophy, and a large intercourse with the wisdom of
ancient and modern times. The perfect lawyer, like the perfect orator,
must accomplish himself for his duties by familiarity with every study.
It may be truly said, that to him nothing, that concerns human nature
or human art, is indifferent or useless. It is desirable, therefore,
that as a student he should work in each of the broad areas of knowledge
in order that he may be versed in the subject matter of each field and
skilled in its methods. The facts he learns may be outmoded or forgotten,
but if he remembers the sources of knowledge and retains the skills of
acquiring it, he can approach new problems intelligently as they arise.
In advocating that lawyers pursue courses in the major branches of
knowledge I do not wish to endorse a set of specific requirements. The
policy of the profession of allowing students to select their own prelegal
*By Earl James McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security
Agency, Washington, D. C., at the dedication ceremonies of the new Law
Center of New York University, at the morning session, Sept. 15, 1951.
ADVANCE COPY. NOT FOR RELEASE BEFORE SATURDAY P.M. 's. Published in
New York University Law Review, Volume 27, Number 1, January 1952. pp. 49-62.
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