Kentucky Lawyer

The ever-growing law

119 Kentucky Lawyer The ever-growing law This effort to briefly record something of the color and romance of the bar of Kentucky as observed these many years must of course be incomplete. The law itself, with its comple, many sidedness, makes a full history of these years impossible. A student of the law is constantly confronted with its paradoical nature. Solid and fluid, broad and narrow, kind and harsh, changeless and yet ever changing; but as we here in America have learned, it is always eminently fair and impartial. The statue of the blind goddess with evenly balanced scales is no myth but an ever present reality in the cause of justice. One thing the true student or practitioner knows is that the law is not static. It must recognize change. “New times demand new measures and new men, The old advances and in time outgrows the laws Which in our fathers’ day were best. And after us some purer scheme will be shaped out By wiser men than we, Made wiser by the steady growth of truth.” At a time of one of the vacancies on the United States Supreme Court during the administration of Woodrow Wilson, a Kentucky delegation from the Congress called on the President to urge the appointment to the court of Circuit Judge J. M. Benton of Winchester. Senator Alben W. Barkley, who told me this story, said Mr. Wilson listened attentively to the chairman of the delegation as he stated the qualifications and virtues of their candidate. At the conclusion of the remarks, Senator Barkley said the 10 Mac Swinford President asked this very significant question, “Gentlemen ,” he said, “does your candidate believe that the law grows?” Mr. Wilson, who was probably the most profound scholar of constitutional government and law ever to occupy the office of President, then eplained. “The law is not something small but it is something big. It may be likened to a great oak whose ancient beginning is unknown to all living people. For many decades it has stood in the forest and grown into a gigantic tree, giving beauty and shelter to all its surroundings. So long as it grows it will flourish and be of greater beauty and blessing but if there should be placed an iron casement about its trunk it would cease to grow and surely die. The same may be said of the law. It must continue to grow and to reach out and shelter more and more people. Its blessings and security cannot be limited to the fortunate or the few. It must cast its shadow of certain justice over mankind. It must stand for the dignity of the individual throughout all the earth.” The committee, or course, assured the President that Judge Benton met this test and was an advocate of like principles. However, nothing came of the interview. I believe it was at this time that the late Justice Louis D. Brandeis was appointed to the court. ...