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Caption: Booklet - UI Charter of Freedom (1942)
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73 nev, had no right to prosecute a suit to recover lands title to which was in a levee district, as an agency of the State, where such lever district was "a body politic and corporate with power to sue." From this we respectfully submit it uncontrovertibly follows that the University as a separate and distinct legal entity apart from the State, has the power to prosecute and defend its own suits and to employ its own counsel as an incident to its corporate life, and without which the power is illusory. VII. Neither the common law nor the statutes #1 the judicial decisions of this State give any color <* right to the Attorney General as the sole or exclusive legal counsel for the university. In Section V of this brief was pointed out that due to the nature of the University as a public corporation, to represent it as its sole legal adviser was beyond the duty or power of the Attorney General a t common law. We now call attention to certain legal and constitutional history in Illinois. From 1848, when a new Constitution was adopted, to 1867, there was no Attorney General in Illinois. The circuit attorneys did all the law work in which the State as a distinct entity was concerned. On February 27, 1867, an act was approved providing for an Attorney General— to be elected in 1868. This act made it his duty to give legal advice to the "governor and other executive of1 ficers of the State/ and "to institute and prosecute all actions, suits and complaints in favor of or for the use of the State which may become necessary in the administration or execution of the laws bf the S t a t e ; also to defend all actions, suits and complaints in favor of or for the use of the State which may be-
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