Miscellaneous - This Day That Age   

dated August 23, 1956: Advice to lawyers

Lawyers can make a great contribution to humanity at this critical period of world history in deciding whether it is going to live by the force of law or by the law of force, said Mr. Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States, at a reception by three legal associations in Bombay on August 21. Conveying the greetings and the very best wishes of the members of the US Supreme Court, Mr. Warren said, "You in your Constitution, we in our Constitution, have a great many rights that are guaranteed in that document. We have statutes that do the same thing. But any right whether it is in a Constitution, or in a statute, or recorded in any other way, is nothing more than a paper right, unless some lawyer is willing to fight for that right until it becomes a part of the living law of the land. And when I say that, I do not mean fighting for a right that is popular, fighting for a right that the majority are willing to concede at the moment; that is rarely necessary because the rights that are popular with the great mass of the people at the moment are always taken care of. It is the poor, it is the helpless, it is the minority, it is the oppressed who need lawyers to stand up in a court of justice and fight for them until their rights are achieved." Mr. Warren said he had come to India after a vacation in Switzerland whose four million people had earned the admiration of the world by the way they conducted their affairs as a free and independent country. "When I came from that little country to this big country of yours with a hundred times as many people as they have, and when I see those same qualities exhibited here, when I see your determination to be a free and independent people, when I think of the sacrifices that have been made by men living to-day, your leaders, in order to accomplish that progress, when I think that many of those men were members of your profession and mine, when I see the things that are being done to implement that great Constitution of yours in which you have incorporated all the best that is to be found in all the existing Constitutions of the world, I feel very proud, particularly when I note the progress made in such a short time."

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