Members of the bar are always subject to punishment by the court
for official misconduct. This may be by censure, temporary
suspension from practice, or disbarment. If guilty of contempt
of court, they can also be sentenced to fine or
imprisonment.[Footnote: See Chap. XX.] As suspension or
disbarment means a loss, temporary or permanent, of a livelihood,
it is only ordered in aggravated cases and after an opportunity
for a formal hearing.

Disbarment cannot be decreed by the legislative department. That
would be virtually an act of attainder. It must come from a
judicial sentence.[Footnote: _Ex parte_ Garland, 4 Wallace's
Reports, 333, 378.]

In some States the principal trial court, which is the one by
order of which attorneys generally are admitted to the bar,
appoints a standing committee on grievances. In others such
committees are created by Bar Associations, of which almost every
State has one for the whole State, while several have also one or
more local associations. It is the duty of such a committee to
inquire into any instances of professional misconduct that may be
brought to their notice and either institute proceedings for a
hearing before themselves or bring the matter to the attention of
the court, so that they may be instituted there by its order and
conducted by the public prosecutor. In the larger States,
several inquiries of this nature are ordinarily set on foot every
year, which result in suspension or disbarment. In the smaller
States they are rare, both because they have smaller bars and
because the smaller a bar is the more difficult is it for any one
of its number to hide any misdoing from the rest.