What are the American Inns of Court?

The organization known as the American Inns of Court is the fastest growing legal organization in the country.  Today, there are over 300 chartered American Inns of Court nationwide.  More than 20,000 judges, lawyers, law professors, and law students are currently members of an American Inn of Court, including 40% of all federal judges and over 1,500 state judges.

American Inns of Court are patterned after the English Inns of Court that began in 1292 when King Edward I directed his Chief Justice to satisfy a growing need for skilled advocates at the Royal Court at Westminster.  The English Inns of Court grew in number and importance during the Middle Ages.  They emphasized the value of learning the craft of lawyering from those already established in the profession.  Their collegial environment fostered common goals and nurtured professional ideals and ethics.

In 1977 Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and other American lawyers and judges spent two weeks in England as part the Anglo-American Exchange.  They were particularly impressed with the collegial approach of the English Inns of Court and with the way in which the Inns passed on to new lawyers the decorum, civility, and professional standards necessary for a properly functioning bar.  Following his return, Chief Justice Burger authorized a pilot program that could be adapted to the realities of law practice in the United States.

Chief Justice Burger, former Solicitor General Rex Lee, and Senior United States District Judge A. Sherman Christensen founded the first American Inn of Court in 1980.  The Inn was affiliated with the J. Reuben Clark School of Law at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.  The number of Inns increased slowly at first, but the growth of the movement began to accelerate in 1985 with the creation of the American Inns of Court Foundation.

In Ohio there are now eight American Inns of Court:

The Judge Anthony J. Celebreeze Inn of Cleveland

The Charles F. Scanlon Inn of Akron

The Harold H. Burton Inn of Cleveland

The Franklin Inn of Columbus

The William Howard Taft Inn of Ada

The Morrison R. Waite Inn of Toledo

The Potter Stewart American Inn of Court in Cincinnati

The Cleveland Employment American Inn of Court

Services

American Inns of Court are designed to improve the skills, professionalism, and legal ethics of the bench and bar.  They help lawyers become more effective advocates with a keener ethical awareness by providing them the opportunity to learn side-by-side with the most experienced judges and lawyers in their community.  The objectives of each Inn are as follows:

1. To establish a society of judges, lawyers, legal educators, law students, and others to promote excellence in legal advocacy in accordance with the Professional Creed of the American Inns of Court;
   
2. To foster greater understanding of and appreciation for the adversary system of dispute resolution in American law, with particular emphasis on ethics, civility, professionalism, and legal skills;
   
3. To provide significant educational experiences that will improve and enhance the abilities of lawyers as counselors and advocates and of judges as adjudicators and judicial administrators;
   
4. To promote interaction and collegiality among all legal professionals in order to minimize misapprehensions, misconceptions, and failures of communication that obstruct the effective practice of law;


5. To facilitate the development of law students, recent law school graduates, and less experienced lawyers as skilled participants in the American court system;
   
6. To preserve and transmit ethical values from one generation of legal professionals to the next; and
   
7. To build upon the genius and strengths of the common law and the English Inns of Court and to renew and inspire joy and zest in legal advocacy as a service worthy of constant effort and learning.

The Waite Inn schedules its meetings for the year which begins in September and runs until April.  Six meetings are held, usually at the Toledo Club with cocktails at 5:00 and dinner and the program at 5:45 p.m.  Pupillage teams present programs under guidance of the Team Chair.