American Bar Association

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AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION

AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION. Founded in 1878 at a gathering of seventy-five lawyers from twenty-one states and the District of Columbia, the American Bar Association (ABA) in 2002 includes nearly 410,000 members and stands as the legal profession's preeminent organization. Its twenty-three sections, five divisions, and scores of committees and commissions address a broad range of legal issues and specialty areas; produce hundreds of books, newsletters, and journals annually; and convene even greater numbers of meetings and conferences, all part of its mission to serve the needs of the profession and the public.

Simeon Eben Baldwin, a young Connecticut lawyer and Yale law professor who later become that state's governor and state supreme court chief justice, was the driving force behind the ABA's formation. Baldwin was joined in this effort by other prominent lawyers such as Benjamin Bristow of Kentucky, the first U.S. solicitor general, and William Evarts of New York, President Rutherford B. Hayes's secretary of state and defense attorney in President Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial. The goals of the ABA's founding constitution remain substantially the same today: "to advance the science of jurisprudence; promote the administration of justice and uniformity of legislation throughout the Union; uphold the honor of the profession of the law; and encourage cordial intercourse among the members of the American Bar."

During the ABA's first twenty-five years, "the membership was small, the policy selective, the air rather social." With membership by invitation only, the original roster of 289 grew to a mere 1,718 lawyers by 1903. Some of its early accomplishments, however, were significant, including legislation creating federal circuit courts of appeal to relieve the U.S. Supreme Court's substantial and backlogged caseload. During this period the ABA spawned groups such as the Association of American Law Schools and the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.

The turn of the twentieth century saw dramatic changes in the organization. Major initiatives over the next thirty to thirty-five years included codes of ethics for lawyers and judges, membership campaigns, publication of the American Bar Association Journal, law school standards, and legal services for those who could not afford to pay for them. In addition to holding its first public hearings (on issues of commercial law), the ABA took a prominent role in publicly opposing the judicial recall movement of the period. Its efforts on behalf of an independent judiciary would continue to be a hallmark of the organization, most prominently during the "court-packing" controversy of 1937.

In 1926 the ABA established its first permanent headquarters in Chicago and hired its first executive secretary. Ten years later there was a major change in governance, with the formerly small and exclusive Executive Council replaced by a larger, more representative House of Delegates and Board of Governors (these continue to the present day, with respective memberships of 536 and 37). The ABA had a significant number of distinguished presidents during this period, including U.S. President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, and Nobel Peace Prize recipients Frank Kellogg and Elihu Root.

By 1936 ABA membership exceeded 28,000, but its composition was neither diverse nor free from controversy. In 1911 three African American lawyers had been recommended and approved for membership without knowledge of their race. Though the ABA did not seek their resignations, a section was added to the membership form inquiring about a candidate's race and ethnicity. It was not until the early 1940s that a House of Delegates resolution affirmed that ABA membership was "not dependent on race, creed or color."

During the first part of the century, women, like African Americans, had little prominence in either the profession or the ABA. In 1918 Mary Frances Lathrop became the ABA's first woman member—and in fact went on to serve in its highest councils—but she was among a limited number of women in the organization.

From 1936 to 1969 ABA membership grew to nearly 140,000. The period began with the organization's strong opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposals to reorganize the federal judiciary, and concluded with the passage of comprehensive Standards for Criminal Justice and a new, expanded Code of Professional Responsibility. In the intervening years the ABA assumed a formal role in reviewing the qualifications of federal judicial nominees, supported expanded legal services and civil rights programs, and spawned organizations addressing priori-ties in legal research, international law, minority legal education, and judicial education.

The most recent era began with the ABA taking a strong "rule of law" stance throughout the Watergate saga, in which former ABA President Leon Jaworski played a major role as special prosecutor. During this period the organization faced other significant issues such as lawyer advertising, tort reform, abortion, high-profile trials, and the rapidly changing nature of law practice. Internationally the ABA began providing extensive guidance to emerging democracies in the former Soviet Union and other countries seeking to strengthen their law schools, justice systems, and law reform efforts. As in earlier periods the ABA has continued its strong support of legal services and judicial independence.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the ABA is a far more diverse organization, reflecting the growing number of women and minorities entering the profession. This diversity has reached the highest offices of the organization, with women and minorities chairing the House of Delegates and two women having served as ABA president. Most recently the ABA elected the first African American to its presidency. In 2003 former Michigan supreme court justice and Detroit mayor Dennis Archer will lead an organization that could not have been imagined by Simeon Baldwin and his colleagues in 1878.