The reputation of the legal profession is at its lowest ebb since I first started practicing law more than 60 years ago.  With ever increasing frequency, the public is questioning the competence, integrity and honest of lawyers.  Indeed, over just the past few years, a number of judges and all too many lawyers have been guilty of self-dealing and other forms of professional misconduct in and out of the courtroom.  These transgressions not only diminish the public's confidence in the profession, but they also subtly undermine the public's respect for the rule of law.

Many are concerned by the bar's seeming indifference toward the preservation of a fair and well-functioning legal system.  With damaging results for the impartiality of juries and the judicial process, too many lawyers are "trying their cases" on the courthouse steps to newspaper and television reporters.  The proliferation of huckster advertising also exploits our legal system by generating counterproductive or frivolous litigation.  And all too often, lawyers fail to recognize how ridiculous litigation threatens access to our courts for those with legitimate claims.  As officers of the court, lawyers should seek to eliminate, not exacerbate, those trends.

The law historically has been viewed as a learned professional rather than a trade.  As such, a lawyer's "calling" goes beyond his or her immediate financial interest.  Lawyers have viewed themselves as statesmen and have served as problem solvers, harmonizers, and peacemakers - the healers of conflict, not its promoters or "gunslingers."  The legal profession in short, abided by standards that were above the minimum commands of the law.  All of the profession's current problems - the eroding public respect for lawyers, the lack of professional dignity and civility on the part of many lawyers, and lawyers' insensitivity to the litigation explosion - are clear indications that the professionalism of the bar has been in sharp decline.

What is the antidote for this decline?  I believe it lies in a recommitment of lawyers, and particularly the organized bar, to the higher meaning of professionalism.  The annual meeting of the American Bar Association, currently under way in New Orleans, is a good occasion to restate these timeless principles.

With 400,000 or so members, the ABA is one of the world's most powerful professional associations.  As such, the association has heavy public responsibilities.  It's obligations include maintaining standards for education and admission to the bar, ensuring professional competence, prescribing and enforcing ethical standards, preserving the quality, integrity and independence of judges, and promoting improvement in the functioning courts.

Harvard Law School Dean Roscoe Pound, one of history's  most distinguished commentators on the role of the legal profession, summed up this mission when we observed:  "By a bar association, then, we mean an organization of lawyers to promote and maintain the practice of law as a profession, that is, as a learned art pursued in the spirit of a public service - in the spirit of a service of furthering the administration of justice through and according to law."  Dean Pound firmly believed that bar associations were the first line of defense in upholding the honor of the legal profession. 

Has the ABA satisfied these public responsibilities?  A book just out from the Federalist Society - "The ABA in Law and Social Policy:  What Role?" - reveals that too much of the ABA's power and resources are directed at controversial political issues rather than at matters relating principally to the practice of law and the functioning of the legal system.

In recent years, the ABA has adopted formal policy positions on abortion, affirmative action, AIDS, funding for the arts, gun control, homelessness, nuclear proliferation, parental leave, sexual orientation, health care and a wide variety of other social issues.  At the same time, the ABA has done little or nothing to attack the root causes of the public's loss of confidence in the legal profession and the judicial system.

What, for example, has the ABA done about the problem of lawyer advertising?  It has compromised professional integrity by drafting the Model Rules of Professional Conduct so as to prohibit only advertising that makes "false or misleading" statements.  Because making such statements could also subject a lawyer to civil or criminal liability, this alleged "standard" makes no distinction between what is legal and what is professional.

At no time has the ABA made the obvious point that just because the First Amendment permits certain conduct that conduct is not necessarily ethically appropriate.   Moreover, the ABA has done little to address advertising gimmicks - such as "first consultation free" and the like - that are frequently employed to entice law-abiding citizens to exploit the legal system for personal profit.

Nor has the ABA done much to address the fact that our society is drowning in litigation.  One has only to look at the over-worked system of justice, the delays in trials, the clogs businessmen face in commerce, and a medical profession rendered overcautious for fear of malpractice suits to realize that civil justice reform should be a high priority.  Yet the ABA prefers to resist or ignore proposals such as contingency fee caps, widespread adoption of no-fault automobile insurance, and aspects of product liability or tort reform.

Instead of confronting such problems, the ABA has become involved in contentious and partisan battles regarding public policy and political issues.  Passage of resolutions regarding divisive social questions naturally involves much lobbying and debate, which leave delegates much less time to address subjects related to the practice of law.

The issue of abortion, for example, dominated at least three recent ABA annual meetings.  This year the delegates are considering whether the U.S. should ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention.  In addition to wasting time, staking out positions on hotly contested social and political issues can have serious long-term costs.  As my colleague Justice Lewis Powell noted while serving as president of the ABA:  "The association's responsibilities relate primarily to the legal profession, and these could not be discharged if our membership were lost, fractionated or embittered by involvement in the political controversy."

The ABA was formed during the Jacksonian era to counter the deterioration of the bar's reputation for competence and integrity.  It is imperative for it to embrace this noble and important mission once again.  The ABA must devote more of its influence to a serious examination of the profession of lawyering and less to special-interest politics and social engineering.

Mr. Burger was chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1969 to 1986.