Abstract
Foundation and Growth
Nearly a half century ago three distinguished Georgians founded a law school which exists today as the Law Department of the University of Georgia. While methods of legal study and education have, in these fifty years, changed, nay undergone a revolution, the great underlying principles of the founders is today the inspiration of the teachers and the norm of the progress of this school. Joseph Henry Lumpkin, Georgia's first Chief Justice, held broad and catholic views of the principles of jurisprudence underlying and permeating all positive rules. Thomas R.R. Cobb, the codifier of our laws, possessed a fund of general and accurate information upon our statutes, unequaled by any lawyer who has lived in the state; William Hope Hull, the cool, firm, judicial practitioner was a fitting complement of his two distinguished colleagues. No men were by temperament and training better fitted to impress on the student the due relation of principle and practice, the accurate adjustment of the laws to the law. Thus this school seeks to instill those unchangeable principles of the law which must animate all philosophically framed rules of conduct, and at the same time gives actual practice as far as possible, in the application of those rules. While it strives to attain a standard of excellence in the academic training of the lawyer, it keeps always in view the fact, that, to the lawyer, law is a business, the most intensely practical of all human pursuits.
The high standard of professional honor and courtesy set by the founders is the priceless heritage of the school today. Unceasing efforts in all the work of the school, is made to impress the student with the solemn responsibility of the lawyer, and the sacredness of the trust upon him. The ideals of the school are high and clean. To estimate what the school means to the State would be to make unfair and invidious distinctions among its alumni. To call the roll of those who have honored their alma mater would be to extend this article unduly. There is scarcely a city or town in the State among whose leading attorneys are not found alumni. Today the school sees her graduates in Congress, in the Legislature, on the Supreme Bench, on the Bench of the Court of Appeals, on the Circuit and City Court Benches. Her sons are found among Solicitors General and the Solicitors of the other courts. Many who have not entered the practice, or have retired therefrom are giving their testimony to the inestimable benefit derived to them from their course in law.
(page 8)
Repository Citation
University of Georgia, "Law Department Announcement 1909-1910" (1909). Other Law School Publications. 275.
https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/lectures_pre_arch_archives_other/275
Bulletin of the University of Georgia
Law Department
Announcement 1909-1910
May 1909
Issued Monthly by the University