IN RE: THE PETITION OF CYRIL JONES, JAMES H. R. COOPER, JR., HARRIETTE BADIO, LLOYD B. KENNEDY, HANNAH T. W. HARRIES, JOHN N. J. J. CARANDA, OSBORNE K. DIGGS, JR., CLARENCE EUGENE DIXON, EMMANUEL N. KOLLIE, JAMES D. K. KUMEH, PARLEE B. KWEEKEH, SYLVESTER SUMMAILA KPAKA, GEORGE Y. ODOI, THEOPHILUS C. GOULD, JOSEPH SEKUM, DUNBAR INNIS, EMMANUEL M. MABADE, CHARLES ZULU, JOSEPH BARCHU, MARGARETTE GREEN-COX, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW OF THE REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA, PRAYING TO THE HONOURABLE THE SUPREME COURT OF THE REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA FOR ADMISSION TO THE HONOURABLE SUPREME COURT BAR AS COUNSELLORS-AT-LAW, TO ENABLE THEM TO PRACTICE LAW BEFORE SAID COURT.
Heard June 1, 1987 Decided February 25, 1988.
MR. JUSTICE AZANGO delivered the opinion of the Court.
On the 1st day of June A. D. 1987, at the hour of 10 o’clock in the morning, you petitioners and attorneys-at-law, petitioned this Honourable Court, requesting appointment of committees from the National Bar Association of the Republic of Liberia, to examine your moral and ethical conduct as lawyers as well as to examine your legal qualifications, in keeping with the statutes and rules of this Court, in order that you may be admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court and practice as counsellors-at-law of the Honourable the Supreme Court of the Republic of Liberia, to all intents and purposes. You have set forth in your respective petitions that you, and each of you, were graduates of the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law, University of Liberia; that upon your graduation from the said institution you were admitted into the local bar association of the various circuit courts within the Republic of Liberia as attorney-at-law; and that you have accordingly been engage in the active practice of law for more than three years, as was evidenced from documents and certificates of admission issued and signed by reputable practicing lawyers of this Bar, as well as clerks of the various circuit courts in Liberia, and supported by affidavits. Each of you also set forth in your petitions that you are citizens of the Republic of Liberia; that since your admission to the local bars as attorneys-at-law, you have obeyed all the rules of the courts and have lived up to and observed the Moral and Ethical Code of the legal profession in its entirety; that you are of good moral and professional character and have upheld the dignity and respect of the legal profession, and have never been suspended or disbarred from the practice of law, directly or indirectly; that you also hold the Bachelors of Law Degrees from the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law, certifying that you have satisfactorily pursued the studies and passed the examinations required therefor for the Degrees of Bachelors of Law, with all the rights, privileges and honors thereunto appertaining; and that besides the court room practice, you have also served the Government of Liberia, companies, and corporations in various capacities, thus enriching your experience in the field of law.
Accordingly, two committee were constituted to pass upon your moral and ethical conduct and to examine your legal qualifications. The Committee on Moral and Ethical conduct was composed of
Counsellor Julius Adighibe Chairman
” Julia F. Gibson Member
“ Alfred B. Flomo
“ T. Edwin Swen
“ John T. Teewia
The Committee on Examination comprised:
Counsellor Boima K. Morris Chairman
“ G Philip A. Z. Banks, III Member
“ Robert G. W. Azango “
“ Seward Montgomery Cooper ”
“ John T. TeewiaM Secretary
The above named Committee conducted its examination in the following subject areas of discipline: Admiralty, Evidence, Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, Corporations, Torts, Contracts, Estate, Trust, Probate, Property, Constitutional, Administrative, and Labour Law, in keeping with the mandate from former Chief Justice Chea Cheapoo. Prior to submission of reports from the two Committees, former Chief Justice Chea Cheapoo was removed from office as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Liberia, upon impeachment proceedings by the National Legislature of the Republic of Liberia. Consequently, your qualification as counsellors-at-law of the Supreme Court was suspended due to the absence of a Chief Justice. Upon nomination, appointment, qualifications and induction into Office of Counsellor Emmanuel N. Gbalazeh as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Liberia, reports of the two committees were consolidated with recommendations, and submitted to him for perusal, scrutiny, examination and approval in keeping with his prerogative as Head of the Judiciary. The Chief Justice was satisfied that the Reports were in order and were in keeping with the Rules of this Court and the laws of Liberia.
The Committee also found that you are possessed of creditable records of moral and ethical practices in the law. Hence, you are worthy of admission to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Liberia. The Committee further found that you are trustworthy and capable of upholding the extraordinary reputation of our noble profession, and that accordingly, you should be enrolled in the records of this Court. Now that you are about to take silk and become members of this Court and the National Bar Association, we wish to remind you, as we have done in the past, that this noble profession is a bottomless pit; it is a cormorant, a harpy that devours everything. It is a past depth to those who without heed do plunge into. Someone has said that the law is a sort of hocus pocus science, that smiles in your face, while it picks your pocket, and that the glorious uncertainty of it is of more use to the professors than the justice of it. Knowledge of the laws of our country is a highly useful and essential part of liberal and polite education. In other words, jurisprudence or the knowledge of the law is the principal and most perfect branch of ethics. Our noble profession is the standard and guardian of our liberty; it circumscribes and defends it; and to imagine liberty without law is to imagine every man with his sword in his hand to destroy him who is weaker than himself, and there would be no pleasant prospect for those who cry out most for liberty.
Our noble profession is the embodiment of the moral sentiments of the people of Liberia. Law is right reason conformably to nature; it is universal, unchangeable, eternal whose command urges us to duty, and whose prohibition restrains us from evil. Society cannot exist without law and order and cannot advance except through vigorous innovators. So great is the force of laws, and of particular forms of government, and so little dependence have they on the humors and tempers of men, that consequences almost as general and certain may sometimes be deduced from them, as any of which the mathematical science afford us. Law is valuable, not because it is law, but because there is right in it.
When the State is most corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied. Remember also that no man can be a sound lawyer who is not well read in the laws of the Holy Script. As lawyers, your profession is supported by the indiscriminate defense of the rights and wrongs. Remember that accuracy and diligence are much more necessary to a lawyer than great comprehension of mind, or brilliancy of talent. Your business is to refine, define split hairs, look into authorities, and compare cases. You can never gallop over the fields of law on PAGASUS, nor fly across them, on the wing of oratory. If you would stand on terra firma, you must descend. If you would be a great lawyer, you must first consent to become great drudges. By birth and interest you belong to every people; by habit and taste to the aristocracy, and you are looked upon as the natural bond and connecting link of two great classes of the society. You are attached to public order beyond every other consideration; and the best security of public order is authority. If you prize the free institutions of your country much, you value the legality of those institutions far more. Lawyers on opposite sides of a case are like the two parts of shares. They cut what comes between them, but not each other. This noble profession is good, if practiced in the spirit of it. It is damnable fraud and iniquity when its true spirit is supplied by a spirit of mischief-making and money-getting.
When the law is in a damnable state, the love of fame is extinguished; every ardent wish for knowledge is repressed; conscience put in jeopardy; and the best feeling of the heart indurated by the mean, money catching pursuits; the law is replaced by abominable practice, which cover with disgrace some of the modern practitioners of law.
There is a great deal of the law learning that is dry, dark, cold, revolting, but it is an old feudal castle; in perfect preservation, which the legal architects who aspire to the first honor of his profession will delight to explore and to learn all the uses to be put, and he will better understand, enjoy and relish the progressive improvements of the science in modern times. With these admonitions given you, and by the power vested in us as members of this Court, we hereby admit you into the ranks of Counsellors-At-Law of the Honourable the Supreme Court of Liberia with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto. And it is hereby so ordered.
Petitions granted