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A Penny for Your Thoughtsby Charles C. KellerEveryone enjoys jokes about lawyers, don't they? Well, almost everyone! Attorney-bashing is not new. But you have to be careful of the company you will be associated with. An early lawyer-basher was Dick the Butcher in Shakespeare's "King Henry VI." In advising the anarchist, Dick Cade, he urged "The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers." Dick Cade was described as "the head of an army of rabble and a demagogue pandering to the ignorant." The idea of silencing lawyers to destroy freedom has been around for centuries. In 17th Century England, Oliver Cromwell in order to thwart individual freedom, decreed that no more than three barristers could gather outside of court. In 20th Century Europe, Adolph Hitler, the ultimate despot, asserted "I shall not rest until every German sees that it is a shameful thing to be a lawyer." almost succeeded and the world came perilously close to an era where liberty and freedom would have vanished. Whether we kill the lawyers, as Dick the Butcher advised, or just tell jokes about them to degrade or humiliate them, the result is the same. People of stature and good advice are seriously impaired in their major function -- upholding the law and protecting our liberty and freedom. As Alexis de Tocqueville mused in his thesis on "Democracy in America" in 1835, "I cannot believe that a republic could subsist at the present time if the influence of lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people." Our early history showed clearly the protective hand work of the lawyers of that age. Jefferson was a lawyer. He wrote the Declaration of Independence, which counted 25 lawyers among the 56 signers. Patrick Henry, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall were lawyers. So was James Madison who fought for individual freedoms in the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers. So were 13 of our first 16 presidents. Lawyer-presidents led us successfully in times of war (Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt). What would America be today if these lawyers had been successfully silenced? We don't see as many lawyers leading our nation and states in the political arena as formerly. Those who make the laws in Pennsylvania number only 48 lawyers, just 19% of our representatives and senators. Sixty-one are business types in the House of Representatives alone. Only four of our last 19 presidents were trained in the law. I take comfort in knowing lawyers are still carrying on the fight to protect our freedom and liberty. Some serve where "the buck stops," as judges. Thurgood Marshall reminded us justice is color blind. Morris Dees in his Southern Poverty Law Center fights for justice without regard to station or wealth. And so do tens and hundreds of thousands of lawyers across our land, yes and here in southwestern Pennsylvania. That's what lawyers are really all about, helping people with their problems, both civil, criminal, and even those societal problems that go beyond the law. And we do laugh at good humor, even lawyer jokes, when they don't cut too deeply, or bash us too harshly. |
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