The High Priests of American Politics: The Role of Lawyers in American Political Institutions.

• Author: Nagel, Robert F.

Mark C. Miller University of Tennessee Press, $30 By Robert F. Nagel Much of what passes for intellectual ferment is just the clamor of professors fighting their way back to understanding what ordinary people outside of universities had never doubted in the first place. Hence even useful academic writing is sometimes strikingly anti-climactic.

This book is a case in point. Apparently, by studying legislative voting patterns, social scientists have managed to convince themselves that lawyers have no special influence on the political process. Sensibly enough, Miller notes that there are many more subtle ways in which the legal profession might be having an effect. He sets out to study, for example, the extent to which lawyers control decision-making procedures, the vocabulary and methods of debate, and even our legislators' sense of what is possible. He concludes, not surprisingly, that lawyers wield great power.

Even if his conclusion will not exactly stun most Americans, some of Miller's data will convince them that the situation is even worse than they feared. Did you know that in the 1980s lawyers were governors in as many as 66 percent of the states? That 25 of the 41 presidents have been lawyers? Or that of the 18 people in Clinton's cabinet in 1993, 13 were lawyers?

It gets worse. Miller recounts how heavily lawyers are represented in Congress, state legislatures, regulatory agencies, lobbying groups, public interest organizations, influential academic posts, and, of course, the judiciary.

One of Miller's most interesting--and depressing--findings is that lawyers tend to be unrealistic and uncritical in their attitudes towards judges. Lawyers, for example, are more likely than other legislators to believe that judicial interpretations are not political. They are less likely to respond to judicial excesses by trying to limit judges' power. And the most prestigious lawyer-legislators, such as those who sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, are actually so entranced by the model of "The Judge" that they talk and act as if they themselves were jurists.

Our system was built on the idea that power cannot be trusted--that ambition must be used to check ambition. To an astonishing extent, this principle has not worked with federal judges, who go merrily on their way enjoying ever more prestige even as they abuse their role. Miller helps us understand why. The legislative branch that is supposed to help check judicial excesses has been...