Political Persuasions
Author | Arthur Rizer |
Profession | Director of Justice Policy and a senior fellow at the R Street Institute |
Pages | 29-59 |
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POLITICAL
PERSUASIONS
In a widely misunderstood line, Shakespeare (Henry VI) had Dick the Butcher
say, “e rst thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”68 Dick was a mindless
follower of John Cade, the rebel leader whose goal was to overthrow the
King—they represented the fall of civilization. In truth, Shakespeare meant
the line as a compliment to the lawyers who served as a counterweight to the
ex-convict Cade, who was in London to foment mayhem, burn the city, and
pillage the nation for his own gain. Cade, and to a lesser extent, the Butcher,
appreciated that lawyers think in terms of precedents rather than radical
change, and so needed to be dealt with rst.69 e ruthlessness of the revolu-
tionists reveals itself soon after the “kill the lawyers” line is delivered, when
Cade orders a law clerk executed for being literate, the ultimate oense
against lawlessness: “away with him, I say, hang him with his pen and inkhorn
about his neck.”70 Despite how many misunderstand his quote, Shakespeare
appreciated that lawyers are a stabilizing force in society. He knew that they
help those with the smallest voices to be heard, nding a balance between
competing interests and, in so doing, maintaining a functional level of social
cohesion for the whole.71
Still today, lawyers face persistent ridicule and jokes about their profession—
good-natured ribbing for the most part. In spite of the outward perception
Americans hold of lawyers, they stand in American history as some of our
greatest heroes: a lawyer drafted our Constitution, a lawyer delivered the
30 JEFFER SON’S PEN: THE ART OF PE RSUASION
Gettysburg address and led us through a civil war, a lawyer steered us through
the Great Depression and toward victory in the Second World War. And it
was a lawyer who wrote the Declaration of Independence.
e practice of law prepares individuals to bring tranquility from chaos
and peaceful resolution from erce battle. For this very reason, Jeerson’s time
as a practicing attorney made him a better president. ere is no other profes-
sion that could have given him a better understanding of the human endeavor.
His practice taught him more than the mere letter of the law and advocacy
techniques; it provided him a Petri dish in which to view the best and worst
of mankind and all its foibles. ere is, of course, the counter argument
illustrated by the aphorism, “a town with one lawyer has a starving lawyer, a
town with two lawyers has two fat lawyers.” But the fact remains that when-
ever we are in trouble, we turn to lawyers for help.
In Norman Gross’s book, America’s Lawyer-Presidents, this idea is well
summarized: “[t]hough many people might initially associate the law with
legal technicalities, procedure, and documents . . . [it is really] an instructive
mirror of the issues, institutions, events, and people that have shaped
American history and continue to aect us on a daily basis.”72 Jeerson ex-
pressed this same sentiment when he said, “the study of law qualies a man to
be useful to himself, to his neighbors, and to the public.”
In writing the foreword to Gross’s book, former Associate Justice Sandra
Day O’Connor reinforced this theory of a lawyer’s utility, observing,
[l]awyers have played a pivotal role in the shaping of the political and
civic life of this country. eir role remains a vital one today. Legal edu-
cation continues to provide the training ground for signicant numbers
of our nation’s leaders. Individuals with law degrees currently occupy
roughly half the state governorships, more than half the seats in the
United States Senate, and more than a third of the seats in the House
of Representatives.73
It should not come as a surprise that 26 of our 44 presidents have been
lawyers. e nexus between a respect for the rule of law and political ambition
helps to explain why each of these men found, through a common profession,
their disparate paths to the White House. In the end, each of them, like
Jeerson, was made a better president for having been trained as a lawyer.74
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