"Rules concerning candidates for admission to the bar.
The judges find it necessary to make it known that they expect that no application for a license to plead will be made by any gentleman not acquainted with the legal language of the State. It is true we have translations of our laws, and those may suffice to direct the citizen in the ordinary transactions of life, But he who aspires to the high honor of being consulted on, and to explain these laws to his fellow citizens, and the court, must be able to read the text. Very few of the acts of congress, which form a considerable proportion of our written laws, paramount to the acts of our State Legislature, indeed are translated. The records of suits must be preserved in the same language as the laws, and the judges cannot designate as learned in the laws, and qualified to give legal advice and to carry on a law suit, who is so ignorant of the legal language of the State as not to be able to read the text of the laws or undergo an examination in it."
[May 7, 1821, Book 2, 1818-1823, 220]
This is taken from the Supreme Court Minute Books, as reported by Warren M. Billings in his book The Historic Rules of the Supreme Court of Louisiana 1813-1879.
The Constitution of 1812 had set English as the language of the law.
