WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS!

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And it is necessary to understand this keystone of legal reasoning – and to accept it as a fact no matter how silly it may sound – before it is possible to understand the strange processes of The Law. It is necessary to realize that The Law not only stands still but is proud and determined to stand still. If a British barrister of 200 years ago were suddenly to come alive in an American court-room, he would feel intellectually at home. The clothes would astonish him, the electric lights would astonish him, the architecture would astonish him. But as soon as the lawyers started talking legal talk, he would know that he was among friends. And given a couple of days with the law books, he could take the place of any lawyer present – or of the judge – and perform the whole legal mumbo-jumbo as well as the. Imagine, by contract, a British surgeon of 200 years ago plopped into a modern hospital operating room. He would literally understand less of what was going on than would any passer-by brought in from the street at random. The law, alone of all the sciences, just sits – aloof and practically motionless. Constitutions do not affect it and statutes do not change it. Lawyers talk wise about it and judges purport to “apply” it when they lay down rules for men to follow, but actually The Law – with a capital L – has no real relation to the affairs of men. It is permanent and changeless – which means that it is not of this earth. It is a mass of vague abstract principles – which means that it is a lot of words. It is a brooding omnipresence in the sky – which means that it is a big balloon, which has thus far escaped the lethal pin. 18
CHAPTER III THE WAY IT WORKS “…the lawless science of our law, That codeless myriad of precedent That wilderness of single instances.” --Alfred, Lord Tennyson In order to demonstrate up to the hilt that the whole of The Law is a hoax, a balloon, a lot of empty words, it would presumably be necessary to take each principle and sub-principle and counter-principle of The Law in turn and divest each one of its dazzling legal trappings so that the non-lawyer could see that there was nothing inside any of them. Plainly, that would be impossible. The lawyer-judges alone turn out each year hundreds upon hundreds of books full of nothing but refinements of The Law and its principles. Tremendous libraries overflow with volumes which are not even about The Law but which are part of The Law. (Lawyers, incidentally, spend most of their working lives trying to make a small dent in the mountains of literature that help make up The Law.) Yet it may perhaps serve the general deflating, or disrobing, purpose to take the legal pants, step by easy step, off a few simple and entirely typical examples of The Law in action. The field of Law known as Contracts is one of the most settled, most venerable, and least politically complicated fields of Law. It is the field of Law that deals with the agreements, business or otherwise, that men – or companies (but companies, remember, are nothing but men to The Law) – make with each other. Those agreements usually consist of one man promising to do one thing, such as to dig a ditch, and another man promising to do another thing, such as to hand over $50. Of course, if men could be trusted to keep their promises there would be no excuse for a Law of Contracts – but then if men could be trusted to act decently in general there would be little need for Law of any kind. As a matter of fact, only gamblers trust each other to keep their promises, for The Law will not stoop to enforce a gambling agreement or bet. The whole Law of Contracts is based on the idea that men in general cannot be trusted to keep their promises, and around this area of mutual mistrust The Law lays down its principles. The first principle is that before you can have a Contract that The Law will uphold, you must have an Offer by one party and an Acceptance by another party. (Only The Law insists on making a “party” out of a single person.) What then, in the first place, is a legal Offer? It is something quite different from an ordinary non-legal offer, in the sense that the man in the street might use that word. A lawyer would scoff at the notion that most offers were Offers. 19
Page 1 and 2: WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS! FRED RODELL
Page 3 and 4: Preface No lawyer will like this bo
Page 5 and 6: good and which are bad, which are a
Page 7 and 8: average man can find out what is go
Page 9 and 10: matters-of-factness, once they have
Page 11 and 12: was suddenly thrown out of court on
Page 13 and 14: or problem. Of course the truths ar
Page 15 and 16: Supreme Court might do with part of
Page 17: Law to a specific dispute. Whereas
Page 21 and 22: involving an Implied Rejection of t
Page 23 and 24: question of whether there was or wa
Page 25 and 26: Consideration. It will also, inevit
Page 27 and 28: though, in any case, any abstract l
Page 29 and 30: get into a fight over the terms. Or
Page 31 and 32: Not at all, said the Supreme Court,
Page 33 and 34: much more cautious when it came to
Page 35 and 36: should be slow to construe the clau
Page 37 and 38: practically all Constitutional Law,
Page 39 and 40: federal government the power to col
Page 41 and 42: But the Supreme Court, as might be
Page 43 and 44: Thus it can happen - and has often
Page 45 and 46: productive investments a tax amount
Page 47 and 48: declaration the trustee undertakes
Page 49 and 50: the statute. The opinon accepted an
Page 51 and 52: (Judges and others have from time t
Page 53 and 54: property tax. And indeed the Court
Page 55 and 56: Thus, the reasoning of the Court in
Page 57 and 58: “jurisdiction” to tax involves
Page 59 and 60: CHAPTER VI THE LAW AND THE LADY “
Page 61 and 62: The lady’s next two problems are
Page 63 and 64: Finally, after dinner, the question
Page 65 and 66: principles of The Law are phrased i
Page 67 and 68: CHAPTER VII FAIRY TALES AND FACTS
Page 69 and 70:
is no such thing as a legal problem
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of criminal law. And “Waste not,
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and wide-open a choice as if the la
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drawn up and phrased by lawyers in
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CHAPTER VIII MORE ABOUT LEGAL LANGU
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He will just trust his lawyer - or
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No wonder, then, that the lawyers c
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The kind of lawyer who is never los
Page 85 and 86:
“justice” for granted than you
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Constitutional Law and Criminal Law
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Perhaps all this discussion of the
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The “casebook method” of teachi
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vast majority of law schools still
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and justice which the lawyers claim
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arrangements and like almost every
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with, that The Law is regularly bou
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The Law, toward the side that talks
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that she is a villain too, whereas
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problem or squabble that may arise.
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themselves have often done it with
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knowledge to an examination of the
Page 111 and 112:
practical problems, be better able
Page 113 and 114:
the lawyers’ rule; arbitrators ha
Page 115:
lawyers, are indeed founded on the
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WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS!

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