A. McKinner, Maxton, N. C.; D. M. Stringfield, Fayetteville, N. C.; H. T. Averitt, Fayetteville, N. C.; W. P. Byrd, Lillington, N. C.; Charles Hutchins, Burnsville, N. C.; Bennett Nooe, Clayton, N. C.

Respectfully submitted,

R. H. SYKES, Acting Chairman,
T. S. BEALL,

E. F. YOUNG,

TERRY LYON,
J. W. PLESS.

The President: The report will be received and filed. Mr. Edmond Jones, of Lenoir: As a member of the Committee on Membership, before the business of the session is closed I would desire to ask any members of the Association from the Sixteenth District to meet me in the lobby of the hotel immediately after the morning session is concluded today.

The President: We are very fortunate in having with us today, one of the most distinguished lawyers of this State, who has kindly consented to deliver an address to this Association. The subject of his address is:

LAW IN ITS RELATION TO ECONOMIC FREEDOM
AND MORALITY.

Judge W. P. Bynum will now address the Association:

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the North Carolina Bar Association:

One of the striking characteristics of the extraordinary period through which we are passing seems to be a general uprising against alleged social miseries and imperfections and an earnest effort on the part of the people of this country to bring greater happiness and greater hope to the life of the so-called masses. The common good, the health, comfort and convenience of the mass, is the keynote and inspiration of our efforts in all of our political and governmental as well as moral

activities. The rights of the individual, both as to liberty and property, are made to give way to the superior rights of the community. The passion for human service, the unselfish devotion of each for the good of all, is the dominant note in the society of today. It is the touchstone alike of good citizenship and good government. Fitness and efficiency for this end is the test by which men and measures, in all departments of social and religious life, are tried. The result has been a re-examination of our institutions and an overhauling of our ideas of government, religion, liberty and life—in a word, a total reconstruction of the social fabric itself.

In this movement of society, it is insisted by many that the law is lagging behind; that it is not keeping pace with the march of economic conditions; that in many respects it is becoming obsolete; that those who administer it, judges and lawyers, are unprogressive and inefficient and that on the whole its administration, in view of the requirements of modern life, is a byword and a reproach.

On the other hand, it is criticized with equal severity by others, not so much on account of its sloth, as for the evil tendency of the efforts it has made and is making to meet the new conditions. One critic, more caustic than the rest, incisively remarks that while in recent years we have been given a myriad of inventions having to do with steam and electricity, every one of which has made possible the expansion of man's energies and opportunities, at the same time we have been given a myriad of laws having as their one and only object the contraction of man's energies and opportunities. "As a matter of fact," he asserts, "it is difficult to recall one single permissive or constructive law, either state or national, that has been passed in recent years"; that he does not know of a single piece of national legislation anywhere on the statute books "that has had as its declared or underlying purpose the promotion of business and the protection of investor, laborer and consumer, or that has been based on sound twentieth century economics and morals.”*

*Mr. George W. Perkins in his address before the Economic Club of New York, in February, 1915.

It is criticized by others still because its judgments are sometimes wrong, its delays and inequities oppressive, and its entire body, substantive and administrative, lacking in that spirit of righteousness which ought to animate the jurisprudence of such a country and such a civilization as ours.

The extent of these criticisms was no doubt in the mind of the President of the United States, himself a lawyer, when in his fitting address of welcome to our national association at its meeting in Washington last October he suggested that in this time of world change "when we are going to find out just how, in what particulars, and to what extent, the real facts of human life and the real moral judgments of mankind prevail," it was worth while for us to look inside our municipal law and see whether the judgments of the law are made to square with the moral judgments of mankind; that we are, in his opinion, custodians not of commands, but of a spirit, the spirit of righteousness, the spirit of equal handed justice, the spirit of hope which believes in the perfectibility of the law with the perfectibility of human life itself.

Criticisms such as these have in recent years become so insistent and have emanated from such dignified and intelligent sources that, while feeling myself able by no means to answer them as they should be, I have decided that I can do no better on this occasion than to adopt the President's timely suggestion and look for a few moments "inside our municipal law" and see whether its judgments are being made to square with the moral judgments of mankind—whether they are based on sound, economic, moral principles, as those principles are understood today, or whether they are lagging behind and contracting by their rigor the energies and opportunities of men.

It is important to observe that the President, careful statesman and student that he is, in the course of his address did not overlook the fact that in all efforts toward law reform, it must not be forgotten that the law cannot precede the thought and conduct and life of the people. While declaring his belief in the essential beauty of the human spirit and the possibility

of translating that spirit into law, he does not omit to say emphatically that this cannot be done entirely. "You cannot," said he, "go any faster than you can advance the average moral judgments of the masses, but you can go at least as fast as that, and you can see to it that you do not lag behind the average moral judgments of the mass."

In other words, when we come to speak of law reform, we must bear in mind that law, like language, is not merely an integral part of the social life of a nation, but that it is an integral mirror of that life; that it grows with the nation's growth and refines itself with the national refinement; that it is the exact product and measure of the national character and temper-a reflex of its life and progress.

Law, Custom, Conduct, Life, are in a sense but different names for the same thing. They are so blended together that one cannot even be thought of without the other. An improvement in one brings an improvement in the other, and a retrogression in one works a decline in the other. If, therefore, you would improve a nation's laws you must improve its customs, its conduct, its life. And as these are the resultants of thought, they can be changed or improved only by a change or improvement in thought, and thought, of course, can be changed or improved only by a change or improvement in the individual. Hence all substantial legal and social reform must be begun with individuals and by a change or improvement in their thoughts.*

Complaints of the law and its judgments are not new. They have always been made. The judgments of the Lord, we are told, are righteous altogether, and yet complaints on account of them are not infrequent; and no doubt there would be many appeals if there were a higher court to go to.

It is all because we do not understand; we do not always know. In our eagerness we expect everything to go our way and are disappointed and dissatisfied when it does not. As Mr. Root has neatly expressed it:

"As a rule, both litigants go into court, each seeing only

*Mr. James C. Carter in his Origin and Growth of Law.

his own side of the case and therefore finding it quite simple; each is confident of victory and has the same attitude towards the controversy as the people who at the beginning of a war cry, 'On to Richmond,' 'On to Paris,' 'On to Berlin,' and are surprised when the journey is retarded. The natural tendency under such circumstances is to criticize the conduct of the war."

Again, our courts are perhaps a little too reticent concerning their work. They have no publicity bureaus to herald the good things they do or to emphasize the bad things they prevent. While we have full publicity, so that all who are interested may see and know what is done, our judges take little pains in explaining things to the public when it is interested, so that it may appreciate the situation and understand the great purposes of the court and the good results that may flow from its action. They announce their judgments with such reasons and comments as they see fit to embody in their written opinions and with that it is left to the public to form its own opinion as to the wisdom or unwisdom of their action. These opinions are seldom read by the masses, who know only the result without the reasons which led to it. The facts of the case are rarely known or understood except by the court itself and those directly interested in the case, and it is easy to see how misapprehensions may arise as to the effect and meaning of their judgments and how criticisms may be made which a full understanding of the facts would show to be utterly unfounded.

Also, the burdens imposed upon the law have increased with the growth and complexity of our national life. Our courts now do much of the work that used to be done by the church and the home. These seem readily inclined to surrender their jurisdiction to society at large, which for its own protection has been compelled to place it in the hands of the courts. As a result, in addition to the regular civil and criminal courts, we have our juvenile courts, our domestic courts, our divorce courts, our courts of morals, and others, for the correction of offenses and the reclamation of delin