Legal Education at Notre Dame

I am grateful for this opportunity to discuss with you our plans and hopes for the Law School. In my first appearance as dean before the student body I said this: Our goal is to impart the know-how a lawyer must have and simultaneously to ignite the spark of a passion for justice. Most if not all of you came here to learn how to make a living practicing law. We owe a duty to you and to your parents to provide what you came to get. And we owe a duty to the clients who will consult you. But we will have failed no matter how professionally competent you are when you leave here, if that is all you are. We must send out graduates who will carry in their hearts and exemplify in their professional lives the faith so eloquently expressed by Mr. Justice Jackson, as follows: \u27The lawyer must believe with all the intensity of his being in law as the \u27framework of society, in the independent judicial function as the means for applying the law, and in the nobility of his profession as an aid in the judicial process.\u27 We have a third responsibility. As I told the students, we owe a duty to them and their parents and to their future clients; we owe a duty, also, to the nation. Lawyers, more than any other occupational group, have molded the past which has brought our country to leadership in a troubled world. As they have molded the past, so too will lawyers mold the future. To train able lawyers who are eager to meet the challenge of this fateful age is, therefore, a responsibility which the Law School explicitly recognizes. In short, the nation needs good lawyers and the Law School aims to give the nation good lawyers in increasing numbers