Court Opinion

ID: 9588396
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:34:06.751976+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:53.616631
License: Public Domain

Hale, J.
(concurring in the result) — I concur in the result of this opinion but disagree with those parts of it which imply that the Washington State Bar Association is not a creature of the legislature but exists rather at the sufferance of this court. That the highest court of the state, created by the constitution, possesses many inherent powers with respect to the discipline of attorneys is not to be denied. But it is equally true that the legislature is not without power to prescribe requirements for the admission to practice and minimum standards of conduct for attorneys.
The legislature may, I believe, create agencies to enforce these requirements and standards. There are many ways in which the legislature could in the public interest have regulated the practice of law, but it chose to do so by creating an integrated state bar association. To accomplish its purpose, it saw fit to make the state bar a governmental agency. RCW 2.48.010 reads:
There is hereby created as an agency of the state, for the purpose and with the powers hereinafter set forth, an association to be known as the Washington State Bar Association, hereinafter designated as the state bar, *274which association shall have a common seal and may sue and be sued, and which may, for the purpose of carrying into effect and promoting the objects of said association, enter into contracts and acquire, hold, encumber and dispose of such real and personal property as is necessary thereto.
(Italics mine.)
Assuming the validity of the integrated bar act of which RCW 2.48.010 is the first section, it appears to me that, as a part of its constitutional powers to regulate the practice of law in this state, the legislature acted reasonably in the exercise of that power by providing that no one shall engage in the practice of law in this state unless he is an active member of the state bar association. RCW 2.48.170.
We are not concerned in this case with the illegal delegation of powers to this state agency as I see it, nor with questions of equal protection and special privileges and immunities under the Fourteenth Amendment, and their resolution here ought not be implied.
Petition for rehearing denied March 24, 1972.