Elements of Morals / With Special Application of the Moral Law to the Duties of the Individual and of Society and the State

by Paul Janet

The duties of lawyers are varied according as the cases are civil or criminal cases.

In civil law-suits, the absolute duty is the following: not to take up bad cases. Only it is necessary to understand well this principle. It is generally believed that a bad case is the losing one, and a good case the winning one. Thus would there in every law-suit be a lawyer who failed in his duty: the one, namely, who lost the case. This is a false idea, which very unjustly throws in many minds discredit upon the profession of the law.

Certainly there are cases where the law is so clear, jurisprudence so established, the morality so evident and imperious, that a suit having the three against itself, may be called a bad case; and the lawyer who can allow his client to believe the suit defensible, and who employs his skill and eloquence in defending it, fails in his professional duty. But this is not generally the case. In most cases, it is very difficult to tell beforehand who is right, who wrong, and precisely because it is difficult, are there judges whose proper function it is to decide. Now, in order that the judge may decide, he must be acquainted with all the details of the case; all possible reasons from both sides must be laid before him. Everybody knows that one can never of one’s own account find in favor of a solution or conclusion, all the reasons which the interested party can; now, it is just that these reasons be set forth: this is the business of the lawyers. One must not forget that in every law-suit there is a pro and a con. It is for this very reason there is a suit. The lawyers are specially here to plead for the pro and con, each from his own standpoint. One could very well understand, for example, that the court should have at its disposal functionaries commissioned to prepare the cases and plead for the contending parties: one would take up Peter’s cause, the other, Paul’s; this is just the part of the lawyers, with this difference, that the choice of the lawyer is left to the client, because it is but just that a deputy be chosen by him he is supposed to represent.

In criminal cases there are equally very delicate questions. How can a lawyer defend as innocent one who is guilty? Were it not an actual lie? And yet society does not allow that any accused, whoever he be, be left without counsel; and when none present themselves, it provides one, charging him to save the life of the accused if he can. It is the interest of society that no innocent person be condemned, and that even the guilty should not be punished beyond what he deserves; in short, it takes care that all the reasons that can be brought forth to attenuate the gravity of an offense be well weighed, and even set forth in a manner to arouse pity and sympathy. Such is the business of the lawyers.

It is evident that these considerations, which show the lawyer’s profession to be one so legitimate and exalted, should not be improperly understood. These general rules must be interpreted with delicacy of feeling and conscience.

106. IV. Science—Teaching—Medicine—The letters and arts.—Beside the social powers which make, execute and apply the laws, there is science, which instructs men, enlightens them, directs their work, and which even, setting utility aside, is yet in itself an object of disinterested research. Side by side with the sciences are the letters and arts, which pursue and express the beautiful, as science pursues the true. Finally, to science and art are added morality and religion, whose object is the good. The moralists, it is true, do not constitute a particular profession in society, or at least their part is blended with teaching in general; religion has its interpreters, who find in their dogmas and traditions the rules of their duties. It is not the business of lay morality to teach these. Let us, therefore, content ourselves with a few principles concerning the sciences and letters.

107. Science—Duties of Scientists.—Science may be cultivated in two different ways and from two different standpoints: 1, for itself; 2, for its social advantages—for the services it renders to men. There is but a small number of men who have a natural taste for pure science, and the leisure to give themselves up to the love of it; but those who choose such a life contract thereby certain duties.

The first of all is the love of truth. The only object for the scientist to pursue is truth. He must, therefore, lay aside all interests and passions antagonistic to truth; and, above all, personal interest which inclines one to prefer one theme to another, because of the advantages it may bring; this is, however, so gross a motive, that it would not be supposed to exist with a true scholar; yet are there other causes of error no less dangerous—for example, the interest of a cause—of a conviction which is dear to us; the interest of our self-love, which makes us persist in error known to be such; the spirit of system, by which one shows his peculiar forte, etc. All these passions should give way before the pure love of truth.

108. The communication of science—Teaching.—The principal duty of those who are possessed of science is to communicate it to other men. Certainly, all men are not called to be scholars; but all should in some degree have their intelligence cultivated by instruction. Hence the duty of teaching imposed upon scholars; but this duty brings with it many others.

1. The masters who teach others should themselves first be educated. Hence the duty of intellectual work, not merely to acquire knowledge, without which one cannot be a teacher, but to preserve and increase it. The teacher should, therefore, set an example to his pupil of assiduous and continuous intellectual work.