THE IMPORTANCE OF LEGAL HISTORY
FOR MODERN LAWYERING
CHIEF JUSTICE RANDALL T. SHEPARD*
INTRODUCTION
For a profession that owes much to history, we American lawyers move all
too easily through our daily work without much reference to the judgment,
wisdom, and experience of those who went before us as leaders in the system of
justice. This symposium is designed to record and examine some of the most
interesting people and events in the history of Indiana’s courts, its lawyers and
its judges.
I. IGNORANCE OF LEGAL HISTORY HAS FEW EXCUSES
Our inattention to legal history is curious in many ways. First, lawyers as a
group more often than not are people who studied social science as
undergraduates. Indeed, the profession is full of people who majored in history
during college. In the course of earning their degrees, they likely learned a great
deal about the history of governments and wars, the history of social movements,
and the history of commerce. They probably did not learn much, however, about
the role of the legal profession or even the courts.1 Law schools give their
students a fair instruction in various substantive legal fields, but usually not a
great deal about the history of legal institutions. There are precious few
opportunities to learn it later.
Aside from what we picked up on our way to becoming lawyers, the whole
profession operates in substantial part, one might say, on the basis of history. We
use our basic legal education, which bears unmistakable resemblance to the
common law catalogued by Sir William Blackstone, by acting like common law
lawyers. “What have the courts said about the law in this field? Is there a case
on the question my client has brought to me?” These are questions natural to a
legal system based on the rule of precedent. It is very much a rule of history.
Of course, there are a few circles in which legal history thrives and produces
regular writings. These subjects range from those of wide interest, like the
evolution of tort doctrine, to true esoterica, like a piece concerning the evolution
of Russian secured transaction law before 1917.2 On a broader front, bar
associations publish pieces about famous milestones3 and about associations of
2 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 30:1
4. The Indiana State Bar Association, for example, celebrated its centennial year with a
commemorative edition of Res Gestae about the history of the profession and the association. See
RES GESTAE, Sept. 1996.
5. The “Niagara” of new statutes tells quite a story. The 1893 Indiana Legislature enacted
380 pages of new laws. Fifty years later, the 1943 legislature enacted 1070 pages of new laws. In
1993, it enacted 4919 pages of new laws. The executive branch does the same thing, of course.
Fifty years ago there was no such thing as the Indiana Register. Last year the Indiana Register
published 2639 pages of new, revised, or proposed regulations.
6. A student written work for this symposium discusses the Indiana common law reception
statute, which incorporates the English common law as it existed in the year 1607 into the law of
Indiana. IND. CODE § 1-1-2-1 (1993). I think it would be a fair statement that judges of this state
and others assumed they should apply English common law made in years thereafter and that one
regularly encounters debate about “what was the common law” during the course of modern
litigation.
7. Morgan Drive Away, Inc. v. Brant, 489 N.E.2d 933, 934 (Ind. 1986).
lawyers.4
There may be a stronger message about lawyers and history in the fact that
you can count on lawyers as people who enjoy telling and hearing stories about
the profession. Lawyers’ lounges or vacant jury rooms in county courthouses are
still places where counsel trade tales about cases and people. This is consistent
with the common law tradition, in which judges, lawyers, and law students met
in the English inns of court to debate cases and rules of law. Modern lawyers
may be wanting in our formal study of legal history, but you can generally
persuade a lawyer to tarry a moment at the courthouse to hear the end of a story
about some famous case or clever advocate. It is that spirit which motivated the
Indiana Supreme Court to invite collaboration with the Indiana Law Review to
stage this symposium.
II. HISTORY OF SUBSTANTIVE LAW
During a period when so much is governed by statutes,5 one is continually
amazed at how much of our daily work involves the common law made by
courts. As I remarked earlier, the common law, and the rules of precedent and
stare decisis which accompany it, constitutes a system that looks backwards.
Still, the common law has never been considered a static code.6 It has always
been understood that common law evolves over time to meet the demands of the
day, in what Justice Brent E. Dickson has called: “the march of Indiana common
law.”7
The best advocates in this sort of legal environment are those who know that
urging a court to move the law somewhere new is best undertaken when you
know where the law has been. As Judge Robert Grant once said during a
ceremony admitting new lawyers, “Never move a fence until you understand why
it was built there in the first place.”
The benefit of being so equipped is all too easy to overlook. In the late
1980s, the Indiana Supreme Court set for oral argument a civil case in which the
1997] IMPORTANCE OF LEGAL HISTORY 3
8. I remember wondering what the appellee’s lawyer must have thought about why we
were holding a hearing. If you have won below, and the state’s highest court sets argument, the
logical thing would be to imagine that one should be ready to defend the status quo rather than to
take it for granted. (To the best of my recollection, the side with the argument for change
prevailed.)
9. Clarke D. Forsythe, The Historical Origins of Broad Federal Habeas Review
Reconsidered, 70 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1079 (1995).
10. We are now following The Bluebook, like every jurisdiction save California, but the vote
to change was close, three to two. IND. APP. R. 8.2(B).
trial court and the court of appeals had both issued similar rulings based on a line
of common law decisions running from the 1880s forward. The appealing party
wrote an excellent brief about the reasons for adopting a new rule. He argued
with some persuasiveness that society had changed in the intervening century and
that the goals of the law in this particular field could be best met by moving on
to a new formulation.
His opponent rose with only a single argument: the rule is “X,” and it means
we win. He did not respond to the arguments for change, even after several
questions from the bench. Exasperated, one of my colleagues threw him what I
thought was a final life preserver: “What would you like us to do in this field, Mr.
Jones?” “We’d like the court to follow the law.” This answer did not serve the
client well.8
We encounter topics which are susceptible to substantive evolution all the
time. Habeas corpus is a good example of a common tool used every day in the
nation’s courts. It has an enormous history, and judges, even judges in high
courts, are as capable as lawyers of litigating such cases without paying much
attention to the substantive law of the matter.9 Surely, it is plain that both lawyers
and judges make better law for the future if they understand what the law has
been.
III. HISTORY OF LEGAL INSTITUTIONS
If we lawyers tend to overlook the evolution of substantive law, then we can
be downright unconscious about legal institutions and legal practice. Practices
are all too often taken for granted, and we too often repeat rituals and sustain
enterprises long after their reason for being has evaporated.
When our court recently considered whether to change Indiana’s manner of
citing cases, I decided it might be interesting to see when this method got its start.
It certainly commenced before the infamous Bluebook issued by the Harvard,
Yale, Columbia and Pennsylvania law reviews. A quick investigation revealed
that the year of a decision, placed right after the name of parties, began appearing
when the court acquired a new reporter of decisions in 1904. His name was
George W. Self. It was probably a campaign promise, and it was a good one.
We have been doing it that way ever since, even though the publishing world has
turned upside down several times in the intervening generations.10
The same lesson may be learned on more important matters. The present
4 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 30:1
11. For example, appellate judges in eighteenth and nineteenth century England delivered
their decisions seriatim, with each member of the panel announcing his own reasons for voting a
particular way. RICHARD A.POSNER,THE FEDERAL COURTS 227 n.7 (1985). This tradition gained
some ground in early American practice, but it soon gave way to a system by which one member
of the panel signed an opinion outlining the views of the majority. Compare Chisolm v. Georgia,
2 U.S. (1 Dall.) 419 (1793) (opinions delivered seriatim by each of the five Justices), with Marbury
v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) (Marshall, C.J., writing for the Court).
12. The MacCrate Report, issued by the American Bar Association in 1992, was a major
event in this debate. The debate still rages. See generally Legal Education and Professional
Development—An Educational Continuum, 1992 A.B.A. SEC. ON LEGAL EDUC. AND ADMISSIONS
TO BAR.
fragmented structure of Indiana’s trial courts apparently flows from a conclusion
reached by someone in the 1880s that the Indiana Constitution permitted only one
judge in each circuit court. Accordingly, the legislature created criminal courts,
superior courts, probate courts, juvenile courts, and so on, even though it has
been an article of faith in the American legal profession since 1908 that unified
trial courts serve us best. Until recently, no one had seriously examined the
validity of that 1880s conclusion. When the six-judge Monroe Circuit Court was
created in 1990, we broke the m
ความสำคัญของประวัติศาสตร์กฎหมายสำหรับ LAWYERING ที่ทันสมัยประธานศาลแรนดัลต.เพิร์ *แนะนำสำหรับอาชีพที่ค้างชำระมากประวัติ ทนายความอเมริกันเราย้ายทั้งหมดผ่านงานประจำวันของเราโดยมากอ้างอิงคำพิพากษา ง่ายเกินไปภูมิปัญญา และประสบการณ์ของผู้ที่ไปก่อนเราเป็นผู้นำในระบบของความยุติธรรม วิชาการนี้ถูกออกแบบมาเพื่อบันทึก และตรวจสอบบางสุดคนและเหตุการณ์ในประวัติศาสตร์ของอินเดียน่าศาล ทนายความที่น่าสนใจ และผู้พิพากษาI. ความไม่รู้ของประวัติศาสตร์กฎหมายมีข้อแก้ตัวไม่กี่อยากรู้อยากเห็นใน inattention ไปประวัติศาสตร์กฎหมายของเราได้ แรก ทนายความเป็นการกลุ่มมากขึ้นมักจะไม่มีคนที่ศึกษาสังคมศาสตร์เป็นสูง ๆ แน่นอน อาชีพที่มีคน majored ในประวัติศาสตร์ระหว่างวิทยาลัยการ ในหลักสูตรของการหาองศาของพวกเขา พวกเขาจะรู้ดีจัดการเกี่ยวกับประวัติของรัฐบาล และสงคราม ประวัติศาสตร์ การเคลื่อนไหวทางสังคมและประวัติของพาณิชย์ พวกเขาคงยังไม่เรียนรู้มาก อย่างไรก็ตาม เกี่ยวกับบทบาทของวิชาชีพทางกฎหมายหรือแม้แต่ courts.1 กฎหมายโรงเรียนให้พวกเขานักเรียนสอนธรรมในเขตเราทางกฎหมายต่าง ๆ แต่มักจะไม่มีมากเกี่ยวกับประวัติความเป็นมาของสถาบันทางกฎหมาย มีสิ่งล้ำค่าโอกาสในการเรียนรู้ในภายหลังนอกเหนือจากที่เราเลือกในแบบของเราให้มาเป็นทนายความ ทั้งหมดอาชีพทำงานในส่วนที่พบ หนึ่งอาจพูดว่า ตามประวัติ เราใช้ของเราศึกษาขั้นพื้นฐานตามกฎหมาย ซึ่งหมีรูปแน่แท้กฎหมายทั่วไปที่ catalogued โดย Sir William Blackstone โดยทำหน้าที่เหมือนกฎหมายทั่วไปทนายความ "มีศาลพูดเกี่ยวกับกฎหมายในฟิลด์นี้หรือไม่ มีกรณีและปัญหาคำถาม ลูกค้าของฉันได้มาถึงฉัน" เหล่านี้คือคำถามที่ธรรมชาติต้องการระบบกฎหมายที่ยึดตามกฎของเหตุ มันเป็นกฎของประวัติศาสตร์มากแน่นอน มีไม่กี่วงที่เจริญเติบโต และสร้างประวัติศาสตร์กฎหมายงานเขียนอย่างสม่ำเสมอ เรื่องเหล่านี้ช่วงจากน่าสนใจหลากหลาย ต้องการวิวัฒนาการของลัทธิสูญ การ esoterica จริง เช่นชิ้นส่วนเกี่ยวกับวิวัฒนาการของรัสเซียยินดีเสนอกฎหมายในธุรกรรมก่อน 1917.2 บนหน้ากว้าง บาร์สมาคมเผยแพร่ชิ้น เกี่ยวกับ milestones3 ที่มีชื่อเสียง และความสัมพันธ์ของทบทวนกฎหมายอินเดียน่า 2 [บท4.อินดีแอนารัฐแถบความสัมพันธ์ ตัวอย่าง เฉลิมฉลองปีเซนเทนเนียลกับการรุ่นที่ระลึกของ Res Gestae ประวัติของสมาคมและการอาชีพ ดูGESTAE RES, 1996 ก.ย.5. "ไนแองการา" ของคดีใหม่บอกเรื่องค่อนข้าง ทูลเกล้าทูลกระหม่อม Indiana 1893 บัญญัติหน้า 380 ของกฎหมายใหม่ 50 ปี ทูลเกล้าทูลกระหม่อม 1943 ตราหน้าพัก 1070 ของกฎหมายใหม่ ใน1993 มันตราหน้า 4919 ของกฎหมายใหม่ สาขาบริหารไม่เหมือน แน่นอนห้าสิบปีที่ผ่านมามีสิ่งดังกล่าวเป็นการลงทะเบียนอินดีแอนา ปีทะเบียนอินเดียน่าหน้า 2639 ประกาศของระเบียบใหม่ แก้ไข หรือเสนอ6. A student written work for this symposium discusses the Indiana common law receptionstatute, which incorporates the English common law as it existed in the year 1607 into the law ofIndiana. IND. CODE § 1-1-2-1 (1993). I think it would be a fair statement that judges of this stateand others assumed they should apply English common law made in years thereafter and that oneregularly encounters debate about “what was the common law” during the course of modernlitigation.7. Morgan Drive Away, Inc. v. Brant, 489 N.E.2d 933, 934 (Ind. 1986).lawyers.4There may be a stronger message about lawyers and history in the fact thatyou can count on lawyers as people who enjoy telling and hearing stories aboutthe profession. Lawyers’ lounges or vacant jury rooms in county courthouses arestill places where counsel trade tales about cases and people. This is consistentwith the common law tradition, in which judges, lawyers, and law students metin the English inns of court to debate cases and rules of law. Modern lawyersmay be wanting in our formal study of legal history, but you can generallypersuade a lawyer to tarry a moment at the courthouse to hear the end of a storyabout some famous case or clever advocate. It is that spirit which motivated theIndiana Supreme Court to invite collaboration with the Indiana Law Review tostage this symposium.II. HISTORY OF SUBSTANTIVE LAWDuring a period when so much is governed by statutes,5 one is continuallyamazed at how much of our daily work involves the common law made by
courts. As I remarked earlier, the common law, and the rules of precedent and
stare decisis which accompany it, constitutes a system that looks backwards.
Still, the common law has never been considered a static code.6 It has always
been understood that common law evolves over time to meet the demands of the
day, in what Justice Brent E. Dickson has called: “the march of Indiana common
law.”7
The best advocates in this sort of legal environment are those who know that
urging a court to move the law somewhere new is best undertaken when you
know where the law has been. As Judge Robert Grant once said during a
ceremony admitting new lawyers, “Never move a fence until you understand why
it was built there in the first place.”
The benefit of being so equipped is all too easy to overlook. In the late
1980s, the Indiana Supreme Court set for oral argument a civil case in which the
1997] IMPORTANCE OF LEGAL HISTORY 3
8. I remember wondering what the appellee’s lawyer must have thought about why we
were holding a hearing. If you have won below, and the state’s highest court sets argument, the
logical thing would be to imagine that one should be ready to defend the status quo rather than to
take it for granted. (To the best of my recollection, the side with the argument for change
prevailed.)
9. Clarke D. Forsythe, The Historical Origins of Broad Federal Habeas Review
Reconsidered, 70 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1079 (1995).
10. We are now following The Bluebook, like every jurisdiction save California, but the vote
to change was close, three to two. IND. APP. R. 8.2(B).
trial court and the court of appeals had both issued similar rulings based on a line
of common law decisions running from the 1880s forward. The appealing party
wrote an excellent brief about the reasons for adopting a new rule. He argued
with some persuasiveness that society had changed in the intervening century and
that the goals of the law in this particular field could be best met by moving on
to a new formulation.
His opponent rose with only a single argument: the rule is “X,” and it means
we win. He did not respond to the arguments for change, even after several
questions from the bench. Exasperated, one of my colleagues threw him what I
thought was a final life preserver: “What would you like us to do in this field, Mr.
Jones?” “We’d like the court to follow the law.” This answer did not serve the
client well.8
We encounter topics which are susceptible to substantive evolution all the
time. Habeas corpus is a good example of a common tool used every day in the
nation’s courts. It has an enormous history, and judges, even judges in high
courts, are as capable as lawyers of litigating such cases without paying much
attention to the substantive law of the matter.9 Surely, it is plain that both lawyers
and judges make better law for the future if they understand what the law has
been.
III. HISTORY OF LEGAL INSTITUTIONS
If we lawyers tend to overlook the evolution of substantive law, then we can
be downright unconscious about legal institutions and legal practice. Practices
are all too often taken for granted, and we too often repeat rituals and sustain
enterprises long after their reason for being has evaporated.
When our court recently considered whether to change Indiana’s manner of
citing cases, I decided it might be interesting to see when this method got its start.
It certainly commenced before the infamous Bluebook issued by the Harvard,
Yale, Columbia and Pennsylvania law reviews. A quick investigation revealed
that the year of a decision, placed right after the name of parties, began appearing
when the court acquired a new reporter of decisions in 1904. His name was
George W. Self. It was probably a campaign promise, and it was a good one.
We have been doing it that way ever since, even though the publishing world has
turned upside down several times in the intervening generations.10
The same lesson may be learned on more important matters. The present
4 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 30:1
11. For example, appellate judges in eighteenth and nineteenth century England delivered
their decisions seriatim, with each member of the panel announcing his own reasons for voting a
particular way. RICHARD A.POSNER,THE FEDERAL COURTS 227 n.7 (1985). This tradition gained
some ground in early American practice, but it soon gave way to a system by which one member
of the panel signed an opinion outlining the views of the majority. Compare Chisolm v. Georgia,
2 U.S. (1 Dall.) 419 (1793) (opinions delivered seriatim by each of the five Justices), with Marbury
v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) (Marshall, C.J., writing for the Court).
12. The MacCrate Report, issued by the American Bar Association in 1992, was a major
event in this debate. The debate still rages. See generally Legal Education and Professional
Development—An Educational Continuum, 1992 A.B.A. SEC. ON LEGAL EDUC. AND ADMISSIONS
TO BAR.
fragmented structure of Indiana’s trial courts apparently flows from a conclusion
reached by someone in the 1880s that the Indiana Constitution permitted only one
judge in each circuit court. Accordingly, the legislature created criminal courts,
superior courts, probate courts, juvenile courts, and so on, even though it has
been an article of faith in the American legal profession since 1908 that unified
trial courts serve us best. Until recently, no one had seriously examined the
validity of that 1880s conclusion. When the six-judge Monroe Circuit Court was
created in 1990, we broke the m
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..
