WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS!

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talking pig Latin before their elders, the second lawyer has a general idea what the first is talking about. So too, does a judge get a general idea of which way the argument is drifting when a lawyer tosses off a legal phrase in court. And when the judge in turn packs his opinions with such phrases, the lawyers who read those opinions get, if nothing more, a vague sense of trading-familiar-ground. Shorthand if you will; though it is a shorthand which all too easily becomes unbearably long-winded, as anyone who has ever tried to read a lease or a statute or a judicial opinion well knows. Yet, it is precisely out of the constant and careless use of a loose craft lingo that the lawyers’ blind faith in the sacredness of words has grown. Meticulously trained in the mumbo-jumbo of legal concepts, subjected to it every minute of their working lives, the law boys passionately believe in the words they have learned to use. To them, Due Process of Law is not just a handy way of referring to a bunch of old decisions; it is a fighting principle. And even such legal lovelies as a Covenant Running With the Land, or an Estate in Fee Tail, take on substance and dignity. Nor is it only the plaint, ordinary lawyers who take their funny words and their word-made abstractions seriously. So too do the lawyers who have been canonized as judges. Most judges are more likely than not to suppose, when they order a payment made “because” there was Consideration for a Contract, that they have actually reasoned from the abstract to the concrete; that the unearthly concept called Consideration has actually dictated their judgment. As though the abstraction, Consideration, had substance, meat, body. As though it were possible for the human mind to pull a specific result out of an abstract concept, like a rabbit out of a hat, without first, knowingly or unknowingly, putting the result into the concept, so it can later be found there. A court will solemnly purport to decide whether Tony is going to be paid for digging a ditch – on the basis of whether there was Consideration to support a Contract, just as though the idea of Consideration contained within itself, like a command from God, the right answer (or any answer). A court will solemnly purport to decide that the State of New Jersey may not regulate ticket scalpers – for the reason that the sale of theater tickets is a business Not Affected With a Public Interest. A court will solemnly purport to decide that the federal government may not supervise wages in the coal industry – on the ground that those wages have only an Indirect Effect on Interstate Commerce; (and then the same court will solemnly purport to decide that the federal government may force a steel company to deal with a union – on the ground that steel wages have a Direct Effect on Interstate Commerce). As though, in each case, the legal phrase used were anything more than a circumloquacious statement of the result, rather than a reason for arriving at it. As 26
though, in any case, any abstract legal phrase could conceivably contain the right key – or any key – to the solution of a concrete social or political or human problem. Dealing in words is a dangerous business, and it cannot be too often stressed that what The Law deals in is words. Dealing in long, vague, fuzzy-meaning words is even more dangerous business, and most of the words The Law deals in are long and vague and fuzzy. Making a habit of applying long, vague, fuzzy, general words to specific things and facts is perhaps the most dangerous of all, and The Law does that, too. You can call a cow a quadruped mammal if you want to; you can also call a cat a quadruped mammal. But if you get into the habit of calling both cows and cats quadruped mammals, it becomes all too easy to slip into a line of reasoning whereby, since cats are quadruped mammals and cats have kittens and cows are also quadruped mammals, therefore cows have kittens too. The Law, you may remember, calls both cigarettes and sealing wax Consideration. 27
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 and 18: Law to a specific dispute. Whereas
Page 19 and 20: CHAPTER III THE WAY IT WORKS “…
Page 21 and 22: involving an Implied Rejection of t
Page 23 and 24: question of whether there was or wa
Page 25: Consideration. It will also, inevit
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
Page 71 and 72: of criminal law. And “Waste not,
Page 73 and 74: and wide-open a choice as if the la
Page 75 and 76: drawn up and phrased by lawyers in
Page 77 and 78:
CHAPTER VIII MORE ABOUT LEGAL LANGU
Page 79 and 80:
He will just trust his lawyer - or
Page 81 and 82:
No wonder, then, that the lawyers c
Page 83 and 84:
The kind of lawyer who is never los
Page 85 and 86:
“justice” for granted than you
Page 87 and 88:
Constitutional Law and Criminal Law
Page 89 and 90:
Perhaps all this discussion of the
Page 91 and 92:
The “casebook method” of teachi
Page 93 and 94:
vast majority of law schools still
Page 95 and 96:
and justice which the lawyers claim
Page 97 and 98:
arrangements and like almost every
Page 99 and 100:
with, that The Law is regularly bou
Page 101 and 102:
The Law, toward the side that talks
Page 103 and 104:
that she is a villain too, whereas
Page 105 and 106:
problem or squabble that may arise.
Page 107 and 108:
themselves have often done it with
Page 109 and 110:
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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