Political Persuasions

AuthorArthur Rizer
ProfessionDirector of Justice Policy and a senior fellow at the R Street Institute
Pages29-59
29
3
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 oense
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, Jeerson’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 aect us on a daily basis.”72 Jeerson ex-
pressed this same sentiment when he said, “the study of law qualies 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 signicant 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
Jeerson, was made a better president for having been trained as a lawyer.74

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