Book Review
Old Seeds in the New Land, History and Reminiscences of the Bar of Arkansas
by Robert Ross Wright
456 pages. M and M Press (2001)
Reviewed by: Philip S. Anderson
Bob Wright is one of the
state's treasures. He has been a faculty mainstay at the law schools
in Fayetteville and Little Rock. He has written, with Mort Gitelman
of the Fayetteville campus, a leading textbook for law students
on land use. He has served on the Little Rock Planning Commission. He
has been a leader in the American Bar Association. Surely he is
the only law professor to have served as chair of the ABA's Section
of General Practice, now known as the General Practice, Solo and Small
Firm Section thanks to his prodding. He is a national authority
on small firm practice. Before he became a law professor and earned
his LL.M. and S.J.D., he practiced law in a small firm in a county seat.
As chair of the General Practice Section, he was in a long line
of very distinguished lawyers, including Arkansas's Oscar Fendler,
who was one of the section's founders and an early chair. As for the
small firm lawyers engaged in general practice, which is to say,
most of the practicing lawyers in America, Bob Wright was one
of them. He had been there. He walked the walk and talked the talk.
He is held in high esteem by lawyers throughout
America for many reasons, but particularly for his advocacy for
the solo and small firm lawyers in the national councils of the bar.
They have never had a better or more articulate champion.
And now Bob has given the lawyers of Arkansas
a valentine. The subtitle of his new book is apt; it is a combination
of historical facts about the development of the law in the territory
and the state, the leaders of bar in times old and new, social
issues, and tales and yarns about lawyers, judges and assorted characters.
There are stories galore, drawn from Professor Wright's research and
from his interviews with some long-lived luminaries of our bar.
The author combed the records and minutes
of the meetings of the organized bar in Arkansas from the earliest
days for which records exist to the present. There are names, names,
names. The book was published by the Arkansas Bar Foundation,
and it can be bought only from the bar foundation. If every living
person named in this book buys a copy, the bar foundation will have
a best-seller.
Just seeing some of the names again brings
back a rush of memories associated with the work of the bar and
the men and women who led the bar over the decades. There are names
not only of the bar leaders, but also of the workers in the bar:
the committee members and the program participants, as well as
the guests of the association at its annual meetings.
This is an important book for the Arkansas
bar. It preserves history that without it would have been lost.
It is also delightful in its quirks. It is a list of workers and a recounting
of facts, but it also contains a running commentary by the author
on events that are described and his
recommendations to the bar for the future. His observations and
opinions are relevant and entertaining.
The book also has a slightly surreal air
because the author appears in the book, as he should, along with
his contemporaries in the bar, and he receives the same arm's-length
treatment that everyone else does. This is not a criticism. I
do not know how else it could have been handled, and his product is
proof that he was the right person to write this book. No one
else could have been expected to devote the time necessary for
such a full account, or to bring such experience and understanding to
the project.
Bob Wright records this history with one
even and generous voice. There are no judgments pronounced and
not one stone cast. In this regard, his voice captures the ideal sprit
of the organized bar, which is to put differences aside and work
for the common good of the administration of justice. It is a voice
with perfect pitch that is sustained throughout the book with intelligence
and good humor.
The author closes the book with a quotation
from Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, a novel drawn
from the life of Huey Long. The quotation is from the last line of the
book, "Out of history into history and the awful responsibility
of Time." It is a concept that has captured the
imagination of Professor Wright for more than thirty years. He
used it to close another book that he wrote, The Law of Airspace,
in 1967. He also referred to it during his remarks at the 1990 investiture
of his wife, the Honorable Susan Webber Wright, now Chief Judge
of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of
Arkansas.
Bob Wright has a keen sense of one's obligations
to history, and he has surely fulfilled some of his own obligations
by the considerable time and talent that he devoted to this rich account
of the work that lawyers have done to establish the Arkansas Bar
Association as a permanent institution, and to make Arkansas a
better state. And in doing this, he has named names. A lot of them.
Books are for sale through the Arkansas Bar
Foundation at a cost of $50.00 each, plus $5.00 shipping and handling.
Please order your book today by sending a check written to the Arkansas
Bar Foundation to the Foundation's Office at 400 W. Markham, Little
Rock 72201. Remember to include a telephone number in case there
are questions about your order, and the mailing address (including
street address) to which the book(s) is to be delivered.
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