Tony Lyons - The Little Black Book of Lawyer’s Wisdom

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The law is a quest for justicesometimes that quest edges closer, sometimes it drifts awaybut the results are always a combination of time-honored precedent and the efforts of individuals. As United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote: The law embodies a story of a nations development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. That development is a series of dramas with uncertain outcomes. Individuals and groups throughout society play a central role in the legal process by voting for political candidates who promise to pass certain laws, or by lobbying or protesting to influence the laws passed by the legislative branch of government. The law changes because of societal pressure, and society changes because of the law.

The judicial branch interprets those laws, deciding whether or not they are consistent with the Constitution. It then fashions remedies to ensure that reality approximates the law and hands down decisions to deter or punish wrongful conduct. At the heart of these dramas are thousands of lawyers arguing to have one interpretation of the law or the facts triumph over another. The lawyer is both mechanic and architect. We live in an incredibly litigious society in which anyone can sue anyone about anything. At the center of the mayhem, lawyers are at once distrusted, feared, and romanticized.

They are known for their eloquence and persuasionsfor reaching into a bag of rhetorical tricks that have the potential to manipulate. Lawyers frequently are on the receiving end of unflattering humor and disdain, but at the same time they are often portrayed as heroes in some of the most highly rated TV shows, most successful movies, and bestselling novels. In these stories, lawyers are often cast as advocates for the downtrodden against tobacco or insurance companies or the criminal justice system. But they are also portrayed as the least trustworthy members of societyambulance chasers, mob lawyers, even devils advocates. The media respond to the American publics fascination with lawyers at the same time that these polarized portrayals add to the mystique. Underlying this fascination with lawyers is the sense that a society is characterized by its lawsthe actions that it allows or even encourages, and those that it chooses to criminalize and punish.

The law is a kind of nervous system for society. In the trials of individuals such as Socrates, Joan of Arc, Dreyfus, Antigone, O.J. Simpson, suspected terrorists, or even Bill Clinton, as well as landmark cases such as Nixon v. U.S., Bush v. Gore, Brown v. Board of Education, or the scandals involving companies such as Enron or WorldCom or AIG or Merck, society itself is on trial, and the law becomes a way in which society talks to itself about what it has become, what it wants to avoid, and the possibilities for the future.

The suspicion of lawyers arises from a deep-seated fear of being at the mercy of the law. Throughout history, people have been imprisoned or even executed for acts of which they were either innocent, or which would have been legal had they been committed in another place and time. Consider the trial of Galileo, the Salem witch trials, the McCarthy hearings, the protracted imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, and hundreds or even thousands of other cases involving world leaders, homeless people, and everyone in between. At the same time, certain individuals have thrived, even been revered as pillars of society, while enslaving their fellow human beings, looting other countries, polluting the environment, committing sex offenses, engaging in insider trading, or committing other heinous acts. As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote: We should never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was illegal.

Whether an individual is a hero or a criminal is often a question of timingand obedience to the laws of one regime might be a crime against humanity for another. Most people follow the current law most of the time, and they ought to. This adherence to societal norms creates the confidence that makes possible a productive and orderly society. But some things are simply wrong, whether they are laws, actions taken in blind obedience to those laws, or efforts made to twist the laws, usually for money or power. Somewhere deep down we all know where the line is. As Herman Melville wrote in Typee: The grand principles of virtue and honor, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same all the world over: and where these principles are concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears to be the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind.

No law or fame or material success can protect you against that universal truth. History, Joseph Schumpeter writes, consists of a series of short-run situations that may alter the course of events for good. There is no guarantee that truth and justice will triumph over falsehood and persecution, but lawyers, more than anyone else, have the power to plead that they should. By following the logical conclusions of an actively functioning conscience, lawyers can make the world a less volatile and more humane place. To the extent that a lawyer is someone who fights for justice, we all practice law in some form or another at some point in our lives. The quotations collected here touch on a broad range of concepts, often only loosely related to law or lawyers.

I broadened the definitions of each to include the concepts of justice and freedom, and the effects of power and money on their execution. I included the legal system and the lawyers who operate within it, as well as those operating outside of the systemphilosophers, politicians, or preacherswho act as lawyers in the court of public opinion. All divisions are arbitrary, and there is certainly a degree of overlap, but I divided the quotations into sections to create an orderly presentation and some sense of a narrative essay. The first chapter offers some premises upon which laws are or should be based; the second includes quotations about the interactions among society, the individual, and the lawhow law functions to solidify society and the range of benefits and consequences. looks at what happens when individual actions exceed individual rights and those accused of crimes are tried and, if found guilty, punished. Being entangled in the legal system, as most people are at some point, engenders a cluster of emotionsanxiety, frustration, fear, anger, hope, and sometimes, when the settlements are high, euphoria.