WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS!

knowledge to an examination of the claims of both sides and to an intelligent and
practical as well as fair solution of the difficulty?
It is no answer to say that a lawyer-judge understands better than does an
engineer or an accountant or a psychiatrist or a business executive the “other issues”
involved in these cases, or in any other of a thousand types of cases that might be
named. The only real issue ever involved in any case is the intelligent formulation of
a fair decision to a factual problem, either within the framework of some relevant
written law or, if necessary, without reference to any written law. The only
understanding helpful in formulating such a decision, granted that the words of any
relevant statute makes sense – and if they don’t they should be ignored – is a
practical understanding of the problem involved. An engineer or an accountant or a
psychiatrist or a business executive, remember, has just as keen and impartial a sense
of justice where his own interests are not concerned as has any judge where his
interests are not concerned. Moreover, if two or more kinds of specialized
knowledge are pertinent to the settlement of any problem, why should not two or
more kinds of technical experts compose the court which settles the problem? Why,
in any case, should the real issues ever be obscured by the fake issues of The Law?
In any common-sense system of social control, or government, the courts –
the law-applying and decision-making bodies – would be built of men trained to an
understanding of the different fields of human activity with which they were to deal.
The exact mechanics of such a scheme could be worked out in any one of several
ways. Perhaps permanent courts of experts in different fields of practical knowledge
might be set up, each to handle all disputes and problems that centered around their
own fields. Perhaps, instead of taking men permanently away from the work to
which they had been trained and making specialized judges out of them, there might
be panels of experts on call for part-time court service in the settlement of disputes
involving their separate fields of knowledge.
Perhaps – for any such scheme would have to include a central directing
bureau to arrange for the hearing of each case before the right court – there might be
central courts composed of a dozen different kinds of specialists: -- an ex-business
executive and an ex-doctor and an ex-labor leader and an ex-engineer and an
ex-banker and an ex-farmer and an ex-public administrator and so forth. And each
central court might assign the handling of every case that came along among its own
members or among other specialists it had available for service, or among a relevant
combination of the two. Perhaps each field of dispute might have its own central
court and its own outside part-time judges. Thus a central criminal court might
include an ex-penologist and an ex-financial expert and an ex-doctor and an
ex-police official and a couple more, with a chemist and a psychiatrist and a
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