William Howard Taft

Ethics in Service William Howard Taft

Book Excerpt: ...eadings and presented the causes in court. A similar division of functions prevailed in the Roman Bar. I shall have occasion later to comment on the advantages and disadvantages of this division, but this summary reference is sufficient for my present purpose in tracing the history of the Bar in England. During this period, after the establishment of the Inns of Court, the unpopularity of the Bar manifested itself in the enactment of statutes forbidding the election of lawyers to Parliament. This gave rise to the noted Parliament known as the "Dunces Parliament," because everybody who knew anything about the law, and therefore about the framing or the operation of statutes, was excluded from membership. In his interesting history of the American Bar, Mr. Charles Warren, of the Boston Bar, says: "Lawyers, as the instruments through which the subtleties and iniquities of the Common Law were enforced, were highly unpopular as a class in England during the period of Cromwell and Milton."Milt..