I said in the article below that I am sure that the absolutely unique “loophole” by which I entered the University of South Carolina has since been closed.
That “loophole” was even unique in 1957. As I said, there was an article in TIME magazine about it.
The loophole I refer to was the fact that, even if you had never been to school in your life, if you could prove that you knew more than three-quarters of the high school graduates taking the college entrance exam inthe United States, you were automatically qualified to enter the University of South Carolina.
As TIME magazine made it clear, our USC was the only university in America that had that “loophole.”
If you knew what you needed to know, only our USC in the all the land would let you go to college.
Since then the University of South Carolina has integrated and gotten rid of all such provincial ideas.
Henry Clay is generally admitted to have been a terrific lawyer. Whatever you may say about Huey Long, his legal ability is not in question.
Henry Clay became a lawyer by passing the bar exam, and nothing else.
Huey Long studied for five months on his own and passsed the legal exam.
My father, who became an engineer, studied and passed the legal exam just for fun.
Many law school graduates have to take that exam more than once. Some never pass it.
One lawyer I know moved from, I think it was, Oklahoma to Colorado. He got a good job in Colorado on the basis of twenty years of great success in the legal profession.
But he ran into a problem that, while it may amuse you, did not amuse HIM.
In Oklahoma he had been allowed to go to law school with only two years of pre-law study in college. In Wyoming you had to have three, and today you have to have full degree.
In order ot practice law in Colorado, he had to agree to go back to college for another year, and that was a special exception.
So now let us examine the word “education.”
Nothing is made more clear than actual education has nothing to do with this process. The way I got into our USC is now banned as a “loophole” because I had an education but no degree. My lawyer friend was a highly successful lawyer. He had long since demonstrated a complete legal education.
Henry Clay and Huey Long and even my father knew their law, but that was no excuse to let them practice law.
In 1986, in the The Crown Versus Joseph Pearson, a British court sentenced Pearson to a year in prison because he had violated the Hate Law. The court freely admitted that every word Pearson had said was true. But, they said,
“The truth is no excuse.”
In Austria today, David Irving is facing a twenty-year sentence for saying that too few Jews died in the Holocaust.
He cannot defend himself by proving that his thesis is true.
The truth is no excuse.
So I went to college by proving that I was an educated man. People who can prove a terrific legal education are not legally educated.
The truth is no excuse.
#1 by Elizabeth on 01/12/2006 - 7:04 pm
Don’t forget South Carolina’s own Jimmy Byrnes!
Born in 1879, three months after his father’s death, Byrnes’ first career
was as a court reporter back when all court reporters took shorthand.
After that, he bought into a newspaper, and not long thereafter was
elected to the U.S. Congress. As a young man, he became a U.S. Senator,
and worked with Ben Tillman, who was the state’s senior Senator. He
was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by FDR, then resigned to serve
as FDR’s “assistant President.” After FDR’s death, Byrnes served as
U.S. Secretary of State for two years. In 1950, he was elected Governor
of South Carolina…
As a young man, Byrnes had taken the bar exam, passed, and began practicing as
a lawyer. He was consulted throughout the rest of his life by attorneys and
judges, wrote law review articles, etc.
Pretty good for a poor boy from Charleston with no “real” education…
#2 by joe rorke on 01/12/2006 - 10:38 pm
A man who goes to prison for telling the truth is living in a nightmare world and is being prosecuted by criminals. There may be no statute covering their criminal activity but this only tells me that the lawyers drawing up the statutes in that country are criminals. They are nothing but men. They determine what the law is. Truth has nothing to do with it, eh? Minutemen, front and center!
That “loophole” they had in South Carolina in 1957 has a lot of common sense in it. If you’re ready, you’re ready. Bob was ready. Let him have at it. That was a reasonable approach to justice. Edgar Steele is right when he says that an overwhelming majority of lawyers in America ought not to be in the profession. They don’t have an argument that makes any sense against the lawyer from Oklahoma with 20 years of successful experience if they suggest that he can’t practice successfully in Colorado (or anywhere else). What color is Marine Green? Chicken What? It’s not even worthy of discussion. When the truth is no excuse, we in trouble. Big Trouble.