Character and Fitness
In addition to the educational and bar examination requirements, most states also require an applicant to demonstrate good moral character. This has resulted in a variety of subjective factors being used to prevent applicants who are otherwise qualified from being admitted. For example, until the policy was reversed by the Supreme Court of Virginia in 1979, female applicants who were cohabiting out of wedlock were denied admission to the bar. In early 2009, a person who had passed the New York bar and had over $400,000 in unpaid student loans was denied admission by the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division due to excessive indebtedness, despite being recommended for admission by the state's character and fitness committee. He moved to void the denial, but the court upheld its original decision in November 2009, by which time his debt had accumulated to nearly $500,000.
For example, in Virginia, each applicant must complete a 24-page questionnaire and may appear before a committee for an interview if the committee initially rejects their application.
Read more about this topic: Admission To The Bar In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words character and, character and/or fitness:
“I wasn’t born to be a fighter. I was born with a gentle nature, a flexible character and an organism as equilibrated as it is judged hysterical. I shouldn’t have been forced to fight constantly and ferociously. The causes I have fought for have invariably been causes that should have been gained by a delicate suggestion. Since they never were, I made myself into a fighter.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavouring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“Critics generally come to be critics not by reason of their fitness for this, but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were a crime, and counsel should be heard on both sides.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)