Morgan's Role of Leadership in Evidence Law Reform

There are two types of reformer-the meek and insinuating kind that wear down resistance like water falling on a rock, and the scrappy kind that carry the war into the enemy's country. Morgan is of the latter type.Five years active trial practice in Duluth gave him the savor of evidence rules in action.His first campaign for the betterment of evidence law was his work as chairman of a distinguished committee of lawyers, law teachers and judges set up by the Commonwealth Fund to propose reforms in the law of evidence. Under Morgan's leadership the committee "determined to develop a new method of approaching the problem. Instead of relying upon opinion and a priori argument,assistants were employed by the committee to compile factual material with regard to the actual status of the law and rules of evidence in the various states and, inasmuch as many of the questions were after all a matter of opinion, to collect the opinions of those who had had actual experience with the working of the law of evidence in their respective jurisdictions."' After five years of research, the committee drafted and published five proposed uniform statutes with supporting arguments which have been widely influential.