Contesting the legal culture of professionalism

W. Wesley Pue’s Lawyers’ Empire: Legal Professions and Cultural Authority, 1780–1950, brilliantly substantiates his “larger than life” reputation. In this short comment, I have chosen to examine only one small piece of what is a much larger, magisterial monograph. My focus will be the rebuke of Gordon Martin, whose request to be called to the British Columbia bar went down in flames in 1948 because he was a “Marxist communist”. As Pue notes, Gordon Martin held the requisite law degree and had completed his articled apprenticeship. Martin produced statements, letters and statutory declarations attesting to his “good repute”, and his fitness to be called to the bar. He affirmed his good faith intentions to swear allegiance to the British King. As Pue concludes, it was clear that Martin’s “personal morals” could not be questioned, that he was a “hard worker at the University” and that he was “conscientious”. But Martin was a self-identified communist. In a previous provincial election campaign, he had been a candidate for the Labour Progressive Party, which promulgated communist political views. He was also the president of the UBC student “Communist Forum”. Martin attempted to convince the Law Society that his brand of communism was peaceful, testifying that “the beliefs of the Communists in British Columbia do not entail adherence either to the Marxist doctrine of the overthrow of constituted authority by force or the subversive doctrines and activities of certain Communists in Canada”. And his Labour Progressive Party was a legally-constituted political organization. The Benchers of the Law Society of British Columbia took the unanimous view that they had the sole jurisdiction and absolute discretion to decide which candidates qualified for admission to the bar. Then they determined that Martin must be denied entry because his communist politics rendered him incapable of demonstrating that he was a “person of good repute within the meaning and intent of the Legal Professions Act”. That decision was unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal of British Columbia. The judicial opinions decried communism as a “pernicious creed”, communist parties as “agents of the Russian dictatorship” and communists as “operating as a Fifth Column”, acting “(designedly or not) to assist an unfriendly