The following has been floating around the blogosphere for the last few days. Nobody seems too sure about who wrote it, and considering the message, that doesn’t seem too terribly important. I may not necessarily agree with everything here, but again, conservatives aren’t the ones who demand complete adherence.
Submitted without further comment…
The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers Party .
Barack Obama is a lawyer.
Michelle Obama is a lawyer.
Hillary Clinton is a lawyer.. Bill Clinton is a lawyer.
John Edwards is a lawyer.
Elizabeth Edwards was a lawyer.
Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate). Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school.
Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress:
Harry Reid is a lawyer.
Nancy Pelosi is a lawyer.
The Republican Party is different.
President Bush was a businessman.
Vice President Cheney was a businessman.
The leaders of the Republican Revolution:
Newt Gingrich was a history professor.
Tom Delay was an exterminator. Dick Armey was an economist.
House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer.
The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.
Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976. The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work, who are often the targets of lawyers. The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich. The Lawyers Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America . And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers Party, grow.
Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.
This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers.
Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side. Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation.
When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming.
Some Americans become adverse parties of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit.
We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.
Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big.
When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.
We cannot expect the Lawyers Party to provide real change, real reform or real hope in America . Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.
Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business.
Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.
The United States has 5% of the world’s population and 66% of the world’s lawyers!
Tort (Legal) reform legislation has been introduced in congress several times in the last several years to limit punitive damages in ridiculous lawsuits such as spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing the establishment that sold it to you and also to limit punitive damages in huge medical malpractice lawsuits. This legislation has continually been blocked from even being voted on by the Democrat Party.
When you see that 97% of the political contributions from the American Trial Lawyers Association goes to the Democrat Party, then you realize who is responsible for our medical and product costs being so high!
Victoria Coates
Daniel Horowitz
Interesting point.
jackdaniels11 Friday, November 4th at 6:01PM EST (link)I agree that the lack of regulation of the legal profession is contributing to the cancer that is eating away at the American and global economy.
There is an upside to having so many lawyers and litigation, but it’s a tough idea to communicate.
People who blame lawyers for society’s ills are like people who blame soldiers for war. Lawyers didn’t single-handedly create the world we live in. They had a role, sure. But they couldn’t have done it without support from non-lawyers.
What is killing the U.S. economy is mainly the natural consequence of globalization of commerce. People in China will work for $100 to $400 per month and Americans can’t even pay their rent for that amount. In the 20th Century, this disparity was less important because of trade restrictions against China. Now that those restrictions are gone, American jobs have gone overseas to the repressive regimes in China and Vietnam.
You can blame the lawyers if you want. But they are just pawns in this game.
"Are Law Schools and Bar Exams Necessary?"
Menlo (Diary) Saturday, November 5th at 12:42AM EST (link)I actually thought this opinion piece, in the New York Times of all places, had a pretty good idea. I’m going to have to give his book “First Thing We Do, Let’s Deregulate All the Lawyers” a read.
jackdaniels11 above blames the “lack of regulation of the legal profession.” To the contrary, perhaps it is the very regulation of the profession that is causing these problems.
My ideal would be to toss the judicial branch altogether. I have no respect for it. However, I am open to changes in the system.
Though I’ve never been to one, I am fairly confident in stating the purpose of a “law” school today is to teach students how to violate the law. I suppose that is why it seems so few conservatives ever get very involved in it. However, that leaves it all to the control of the left. People who don’t want or seek such power will only cede it to those who do. Under that philosophy, conservatism will die of natural selection. In this country, “interpretations” by unelected officials tend to trump the action or inaction of elected officials.
Anyway, it would be interesting to see what “deregulation” would do.
“The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.” -Felix Frankfurter
If you start with the principle
jakeofalltrades (Diary) Saturday, November 5th at 12:51AM EST (link)that similar results should happen in similar disputes, you will eventually end up with the judiciary we have now.
Trust me – I see this same fundamental pattern all the time. You don’t like where you ended up, so you throw everything away except the beliefs that got you there in the first place and thus are destined to end up where you started, after many hard lessons re-learned.
I think not.
Menlo (Diary) Saturday, November 5th at 1:48AM EST (link)I don’t start with that principle because it has no basis in reality. The judiciary certainly does not and cannot possibly do that; and to the extent it does, it is something any law enforcement or elected official could do just as consistently; and/or it is a “result” that is not based on law and often based on a perversion of it.
It’s gone so far beyond the pale that it should have ceased to have have been taken seriously by both society and every level of every other branch of government long ago. I’m amazed that anyone could still view it as having any more integrity than Congress (or any integrity at all for that matter).
That’s not all. It’s not just where they “ended up” from my perspective. I don’t think there was ever any need for them going all the way back to Marbury v Madison at least.
“The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.” -Felix Frankfurter
So precedent doesn't exist or isn't followed?
jakeofalltrades (Diary) Saturday, November 5th at 1:53AM EST (link)I see the opposite, but I’ve only read a few thousand cases.
That's actually the whole problem.
Menlo (Diary) Saturday, November 5th at 2:21AM EST (link)Precedent is not law. It is one person’s opinion. It should never be regarded as anything more.
The fact that it is ever used IS the problem. As long a history as the nation has had, there is a “precedent” for any verdict a judge wishes to reach.
“The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.” -Felix Frankfurter
And yes, bar exams and law schools are necessary
jakeofalltrades (Diary) Saturday, November 5th at 12:54AM EST (link)if for no other reason than that if you get an incompetent lawyer, he won’t spot an issue, the statute of limitations will pass, and you will be screwed out of your case, only to figure it out years later.
Incompetence
Menlo (Diary) Saturday, November 5th at 2:12AM EST (link)Somehow law schools and the bar are fit to teach competence? It seems the only competence they manage to provide is in perverting the law. You need some education to be able to “spot issues,” but not modern-day “law” school.
But we don’t really know what this market would look like or whether “law” schools or a bar would even exist or whether anyone would take advantage of the opportunity to be a cheap lawyer. It’s unclear what laws might be passed in response regulating lawyers or regulating lawsuits in general.
“The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.” -Felix Frankfurter
The most useful thing lawyers learn in law school
Tbone (Diary) Saturday, November 5th at 1:59AM EST (link)is how to bill 120 hours a week and not die of old age by the time they turn 35.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.