Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Dcwcafcd to R EDMUND M. MORGAN PROFESSOR, I925 - I95O

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Zflffb' Appreciufians ONE of the law'yer's happiest experiences is stimulating companionship with fellow- workers. Whatever may be the public value of the results attained by the Amer- ican Law Institute and by the Federal Ad- visory Committee there can be no doubt that from these groups have emerged many enduring friendships. The Federal Advisory Committee in- cludes as many diverse personalities as does the Supreme Court itself. Men of all types have gladly joined in rendering the unpaid public service which the Court has called upon them to render. The rough and ready distinction between liberals and conservatives is in both bodies difficult to apply. More enlightening Cas far as the Committee is concernedj is a classification based upon predominant experience-judg- ing, teaching, practising. Even so a teacher may sometimes be found voting with the practitioners-and vice versa- this to the consternation of those who had counted upon his support. The member who most often thus defies classification is Eddie Morgan. The very fact that he is generally referred to in familiar style is an indication of the affec- tionate regard in which he is held by his colleagues. W'hen, on a division, his view prevails he shows no irritating elation. When he is overruled he becomes neither lachrymose nor surly. He is a good sport as well as a good lawyer-a combination less usual than it ought to be. One of Morgan's outstanding character- istics is his thoroughness. He appears al- ways to have given careful consideration to the questions that call for decision and he never takes a position which he is un- prepared to defend. Sometimes those of us who are less thorough than he will en- tirely overlook some important aspect of the matter under discussion only to have it promptly emphasized by our more alert colleague. After a proposed rule has been debated there remain no unsuspected im- plications. It would be ungracious to esti- mate the comparative usefulness of mem- bers of the Committee. It is, however, safe to say that in this respect nobody out- ranks the Member from Cambridge. To think of him in connection with the American Law Institute is instantly to focus attention upon the Model Code of Evi- dence, the formation of which is preemi- nently his achievement. It required no little courage to confront the profession with this challenge to age-old tradition. As a reformer who reverently holds fast much that is time-tried but is fearless in propos- ing change where change seems needed, Morgan has rendered the greatest possible service to the lawyers of tomorrow. It is hard for one old enough to be his father to realize that Morgan is about to retire on age . It is at any rate safe to predict that age will never wither him or custom stale his infinite variety. In what- ever activity he undertakes, he can count upon the goodwill of all who have had the rare privilege of association with him in important Work. George Wharton Pepper, Esquire Philadelphia, Pennsylvania EDMUND M. MORGAN is now com- pleting his twenty-fifth year of teaching at the Harvard Law School. His teaching at the School has been almost wholly in the field of adjective law, although in his earlier years, in other law schools, in Minnesota andcin Yale, he taught several of the prin- cipal branches of the substantive law such as Contracts and Torts. He was well pre- pared, by his studies at Harvard College and at Harvard Law School, and by eight years of very active practice at the bar, to teach Evidence and Civil Procedure, the subjects in which he has attained supremacy. No one questioned his unique fitness to draft the Model Code of Evidence for the American Law Institute, and no one doubt- ed the wisdom of the choice when he was appointed by the Supreme Court of the United States as a member of the Advisory Committee to draft the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In the first World War Page seven