National University - Docket Yearbook (Washington, DC)

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NATIONAL UNIVERSITY GODFREY L. MUNTER

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THE 1937 DOCKET Qui Bene Distinguit, Bene Docet T o present Godfrey L. Munter, A. Ph., L.L.B., L.L.M., mem- ber of the bar of the District of Columbia, Virginia, and California, Professor of Sales, Extraordinary Legal Reme- dies, and Practice and Procedure at National University, is to cre- ate an impression of austere dignity which, in reality, he makes every effort to dispel. A toppler of countless pedestals, it is characteristic that his own is first to fall. In declining to stand upon degrees and position, he unwittingly emphasizes rather than obscures the attributes through which that position was attained. As an instructor, Godfrey Munter shows himself intensely alive, keen and practical. He strips the law of the cloak of mysti- cism and reveals it a thing of human contrivance, based upon hu- man experience, but operated by men according to their several lights. In demonstrating the operation of the machinery of the law, he points out its weaknesses and its strength, sparing neither ab- stract doctrine nor human components. His are no reform lectures, however, but a pointing out of those features of our judicial system which might otherwise be learned by costly experience a service too often overlooked in ex- pounding dogmatic principles. The substantive laws receive due attention as, restlessly pac- ing the rostrum, he unleashes a powerful voice and emphasizes im- portant points with deliberately execrable diction, illustrating them with well chosen anecdotes. Ever interesting, he gives one the driest law in Munter’s inimitable fashion; and to those who are skeptical that learning is accelerated when facts are entertainingly presented, his courses are a complete answer. Ask any Munter student the fundamental principle of titles and the smiling reply will be, “You can not give what you haven’t got!”

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THE 1937 DOCKET ,31k 4 cniort;tm E mulation is the highest tribute his fellow men can pay to a man. More than an instinctive following of an ideal, it re- presents a conscious endeavor to attain, through the means another has shown to be efficacious, a more lofty place not only in the esteem of the community but in the more closely guarded circle of one’s own self-respect. In Hayden Johnson was found a man truly worthy of such emulation, for in that kindly gentleman, who from the wealth of his knowledge did impart to us with rare clarity and persuasiveness the fundamental concepts of equity jurisprudence, we were pri- vileged to know a man great by all the standards of civilization. A citizen of the highest type, a leader in civic betterment, an eminent scholar and educator, and an attorney justly renowned, it is a fitting commentary upon his character that he was best known and most revered as a just and honorable man. Equity was Hayden Johnson’s guiding light — that essential equity which contemplates an honest and direct approach to all life’s problems, and a wholehearted fulfillment of one’s duty to the community. As he once expressed it, “Great things are made easy by small, unpleasant tasks well done.” Such was his philosophy and much of his wisdom. His great- est service to us, and the many students who have gone before, was that we were privileged to know him, and from him learn the true value of those basic virtues. Our greatest tribute to him will be the practice and perpetuation of those principles which he so magnifi- cently exemplified.