“What the world needs now is love … it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of…No not for some but for everyone.” Can there be any doubt? The lyrics of that 1960s hit song ring as true today as ever.
Fortunately, the best lawyers are lovers. In fact, throughout history the most respected lawyers – Adams, Hamilton, Lincoln, Gandhi, Mandela, Justices Brandeis, Thurgood Marshall, O’Connor, Ginsburg, to mention a few, were great lovers.
Now that I have your attention, a disclaimer is prudently prudish protection against the prospect of claims arising for false advertising, or a fraudulent bait and switch gambit or worse.
This commentary does not address the romantic nature of practitioners, educators and students of the honorable profession of law. That subject has been well plumbed in many books, theatrical productions, films and television programs.
Yielding to the titillating temptation to enlarge that sometimes salacious body of work in this small space is neither advisable, necessary nor intended.
Instead, my serious point is that the essence of law, equality and justice is respect, compassion, care, wanting and providing for the well-being of other people.
Good lawyering often involves empathy which can be painful, loving others more than oneself, and even sacrifice.
All of that, in a word, is love.
In 1776, future President John Adams, one of the great lawyers in early America, captured that loving feeling when he explained the need for a new government of laws “instituted for the common good, for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people, and not profit, honor or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.”
Adams practiced what he preached. In 1770, he successfully defended the nine British soldiers who were accused of murder during what is known as the Boston massacre.
We may remember that in that trial he said “facts are stubborn things,” but it also is important to reflect on the courage it must have taken for Adams to represent those despised soldiers to assure they received a fair trial after many other lawyers refused to take the cases.
In doing so, he saved much more than the defendants’ lives in America’s emergent democracy. Adams and not the vicious mob was on the right side of history.
Recently we have heard a lot of talk in the political arena and by some lawmakers about the Ten Commandments. As the prophet observed, “There is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
More than 2,000 years ago, a lawyer challenged a great teacher, asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” The teacher replied that there were two. The second, he said, is “Love your neighbor. Love your neighbor as yourself.”
The teacher added that this commandment was like the first, that is, to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. (Matt. 22: 34-40, Mark 12: 28-34, Luke 10: 25-28).
Both commandments to love are equally important. Rephrased as the Golden Rule, loving neighbors enough to treat them as you wish to be treated is the timeless universal aspirational overarching law of civilized people from all points of the compass, different perspectives, religions and beliefs.
In the U.S., the Constitution, our shared rulebook, is the one thing that unites us and makes us all Americans.
A great civic commandment is stated at the start of the First Amendment. This powerful declaration of the rights that protect people from abuse of government power begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …” In other words, “Thou shall not impose your religion on the American people.”
Looking back at the origins and long history of our constitutional right to religious freedom, it should be noted that the Pilgrims, and over the following centuries many of the millions of immigrants who came to America, sought refuge for the free exercise of religion or the freedom to not believe in religion.
The founders’ secular omnist inclinations were powerfully stated by President Thomas Jefferson, in a letter he wrote New Year’s Day, 1802, to the Baptists Association of Danbury Connecticut.
Jefferson was a person of deep religious conviction who believed that religion was a personal matter outside the purview of government. The Danbury Baptists were a religious minority who complained that the state legislature did not adequately afford them their inalienable right to religious liberty.
Jefferson answered that the adoption of the First Amendment by the people “built a wall of separation between Church and State.”
The First Amendment is a hugely important part of our intentionally exquisitely complex constitutional legal framework for living together peacefully in a country and world in which people are profoundly different in myriad ways.
Maintaining our democratic republic, as Benjamin Franklin warned, “if you can keep it,” when the nation is made up of people with stubbornly heartfelt deep differences in needs, wants and beliefs is a tall order.
Keeping the U.S. in good working order requires dedication to the public good by both government officials and citizens. It involves constant effort, patience and time to build consensus through negotiation and coalition building as well as intentional public discourse about civic responsibilities and virtues.
Sadly, that is not happening adequately by any stretch of imagination. All three branches of the federal government are behaving in a manner which swings from dysfunctional inertia to sudden big contentious changes.
Increasingly fundamental aspects of a citizen’s life sharply vary depending on which state they live in. Unlike the mythical Sisyphus and Tantalus, who both were condemned to futile and frustrating labors for their dishonesty and seeking power for its own sake, thriving contemporary real-life versions of these fictional villains abound everywhere at home and abroad. Consequently, a growing majority of Americans are worried not only about the future of democracy, but about the future, period.
Lawyers are, and aspiring lawyers in law school are being, equipped to make a positive difference in the service of public interests. They can midwife the rebirth of Madisonian participatory democracy and limited self-government through their hallmark professional tools of civility, collaboration and cooperation.
By their quotidian work on matters small and large, private and public, and by fulfilling their responsibility to educate the public about the rule of law, and about how our brilliant cantilevered self-correcting system of constitutional government and justice is supposed to work, lawyers can help broker desperately needed reconciliations even among the most hostile divided adversaries. They can set examples for people to emulate about how to disagree agreeably. And they can promote greater understanding about the benefit of outcomes where all interested parties get a lot by giving away some of what they wanted.
There always have been bad lawyers and unjust, inequitable laws. Unfortunately, that is so now and always will be.
The need to correct wrongs and the pursuit of justice are never done. That is no excuse for not trying. Now the legal community can make a start to pull us back from the precipice of the dystopian lawless world we could fall into.
We can start by doing the necessary together, then turning to do what is possible. Eventually, as the people of the U.S. have always done in common purpose to rise above crises, we can accomplish what seems impossible.
The Beatles’ incandescent refrain can be our battle hymn, “All you need is love.”