WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS!

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For instance, the citizens who directly and indirectly voted the Fourteenth Amendment into the Constitution to protect the rights of the negroes just after the Civil War might be a little surprised to learn that under The Law they had forbidden the state of Ohio to collect a tax of one hundred-odd dollars from Max Senior. 58
CHAPTER VI THE LAW AND THE LADY “Women have, commonly, a very positive moral sense; that which they will, is right; that which they reject, is wrong.” – Henry Adams The lawyers have made such a complicated mess out of the word-game they call legal reasoning that any effort to dissect even a tiny part of that reasoning and show it up for the fake that it is, inevitably makes tough going. In a sense, that fact has been the intellectual Maginot Line of The Law. Plenty of people have long suspected that the lawyers with their long words were indulging in nothing more nor less than wholesale flimflam, but when it comes down to trying to take the flimflam, with all its myriad trappings, apart, people just can’t be bothered. And even a personally conducted tour through the mirror mazes of legal logic becomes tiring and confusing. It may, however, be possible to indicate something of the futility and irrelevance of legal processes merely by an imaginary application of the legal way of settling problems to a field in which decisions are customarily made in a more direct and efficient manner. Suppose, just for instance, a housewife – by repute one of the more practical species of human being – were to run her affairs for a day according to the legal pattern of principles, counter-principles, and concepts. Suppose ---. In the first place, she would of course be guided, from afar, by a dim and conveniently ambiguous ideal of personal justice. She would be bothered about doing the right thing, making the right decision, but since she would be her own Supreme Court, anything she did would be right – after she did it. The difficulty would lie in deciding beforehand what to do and what not to do, in accordance with the inexorable rules of her personal Law. That Law would have two primary principles. The first would be that anything which seems presently desirable is right. The second would be that anything which seems presently desirable is likely, in the long run, to be wrong. Of course, the two principles might occasionally seem to conflict in their application to a specific fact situation, but that would be of minor importance since both, in the abstract, would be entirely valid lergal principles. Each, moreover, would be buttressed with sub-principles and sub-sub-principles which might come in handy in making certain sorts of decisions. The lady’s day begins. Her first decision, obviously, is whether to get up or lie in bed a little longer. She remembers that The Law is that anything which seems 59
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WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS! FRED RODELL
Page 3 and 4:
Preface No lawyer will like this bo
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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 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: “jurisdiction” to tax involves
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
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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
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knowledge to an examination of the
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practical problems, be better able
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the lawyers’ rule; arbitrators ha
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lawyers, are indeed founded on the
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WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS!

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