The State of the Discipline

Abstract

When the turn of fate brings to a man the honor of speaking on this occasion, he is likely to review the remarks of his predecessors. Their practice, I find, has been, in the main, to address themselves to one or the other of two kinds of themes. They discourse either upon a substantive problem within their own specialty or upon a matter of common concern to us as members of the same profession. As our interests have become more diverse, the second alternative seems to have been followed with greater frequency. My decision to consider in my remarks the state of our discipline has, therefore, the support of precedent if not the merit of prudence. The burden of my argument may be stated briefly and bluntly. It is that the demands upon our profession have grown more rapidly than has the content of our discipline. We are, in a sense, the victims of our own success. The achievements of our profession arouse expectations that our discipline enables us to meet only imperfectly.