Meaning in the Life of a Lawyer

The following essay is based on a talk delivered by Ray Ruston Distinguished Lecturer Series at Cumberland School of Law at Samford University, Feb. 29-March 1, 1996 and subsequently printed in the Cumberland Law Review. Adapted from 26 Cumberland Law Review 763 (1996) by permission.© 1996 by Cumberland Law Review. A complete version is available from the editor of Law Quadrangle Notes.

The appeal of a life of civic responsibility and action, or "civility," seems to me to lie not only in the necessarily vain, but deeply human, hope of immortality, but to have a more immediate ground or basis as well: in one's need to belong to a larger community and to have a place within it as a participant and not merely an observer.