New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1901-03-12
No LowERLNG or SrANDARDs.

| The persistent and increasing efforts which are
| being made AT Albany to let down the bars and
make admission to legal practice more easy are n
violation OF one of the oldest and most precious
principles of organized society. In remote antiQ-
nifty anathemas were pronounced against fasi-
ffers Of standards, whether of measure or weight
or value. All down the ages the deba of
coin, the giving of light weight or short measure
and all misrepresentation of quantity and quail
ity have been regarded as Odous. The last two
national campaigns in this country have been
conducted chiefly on the issue of maintaining
| an honest standard Of currency. Nor Is the
principle less valid in intellectual than in mate
rial affairs. The school or college which gradu-
ates students and confers degrees on the com
pletion of Il too scant curriculum Is regarded
with disfavor. The concern which sells diplo-
mas without requiring any real study is legally
dealt with criminal. The wholesome rule
everywhere is that established standards must
be maintained.
1t would he most pernicious. then to set the
example of lowering the standard, either gen
orally or in specially favored cases, in respect
to the legal profession, whose province it is
largely TO safeguard and TO maintain all stand
ards The precedent thus set would be mis-
chievous. For If special legislation may make a
short cut to the bar, why not to other profess
surround the teachers desk and admit men and
women thereto without the examinations which
are now required? Why not decree that any
one who has been in tile employment of physi-
clan for three years may be licensed, without
examination or degree to practise medicine
We have no idea that the advocates OF the
pending proposals for easier admission To the
bar would urge such action in these other cases,
but their refusal to do so would not be logical.
Nor are we sure that such lowering OF medical
and pedagogical standards would result much, if
at all, more disastrously than lowering of the
legal standard The two complaints oftenest
heard of the legal profession-and they are
heard entirely too often-are that it is over
crowded and that 1t contains too many men
who either incompetent INSCRIPTIONS.
Surely the remedy for such evils is not in a
lowering but rather in a maintenance and even n
raising of the standards of admission to the bar
The proposed letting down the bars" would
therefore be injurious to the profession itself
and to its clients 1t would also be grossly
unjust TO the various law schools at our great
universities and elsewhere. These institutions
under legal charters, have gone to much expense
and labor for the education of their students up
to certain standard, which may say is
high, honorable and worthy standard but not q
bit too high. 1t would be altogether unfair to
of their going TO these schools or of their pur-
suing elsewhere an equivalent course of study
since there is a short cut side door, by means
of which easier access TO the bar may be had
There would then be no encouragement to the
schools TO vie with each other. as they have
done, in elevating their standards of scholar
ship but rather provocaton. and indeed
compulsion, to compete in making their courses
as short and cheap and their scholarship as low
as might be compatible with squeezing into the
profession through the side door OF fayoritism
or special legislation.
1t should not be necessary to urge further the
shame it would be 10 the State to impair its
standard of legal ability in age when the
otherwise universal tendency is toward a raising
of all the standards, and at the very time when
| the whole world is celebrating the vast advance
which was made in the last century and Il
looking forward with glowing anticipations 10
the progress which will be made in the century