The author of this book and Prof. Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit) discuss the subject on PJTV.
Here’s the book summary from Amazon (paragraph break added):
Virtually all American judges are former lawyers. This book argues that these lawyer-judges instinctively favor the legal profession in their decisions and that this bias has far-reaching and deleterious effects on American law. There are many reasons for this bias, some obvious and some subtle. Fundamentally, it occurs because — regardless of political affiliation, race, or gender — every American judge shares a single characteristic: a career as a lawyer.This shared background results in the lawyer-judge bias. The book begins with a theoretical explanation of why judges naturally favor the interests of the legal profession and follows with case law examples from diverse areas, including legal ethics, criminal procedure, constitutional law, torts, evidence, and the business of law. The book closes with a case study of the Enron fiasco, an argument that the lawyer-judge bias has contributed to the overweening complexity of American law, and suggests some possible solutions.
captcrisis says:
The most embarrassing: Lucas v. Hamm. The Rule Against Perpuities is so hard that lawyers are not liable for getting it wrong.
January 27, 2011, 12:48 pmZathras says:
I’ve wondered about this a lot in the context of legal malpractice cases. In many jurisdictions it is almost impossible to win a legal malpractice case. Judges are very willing to dismiss these cases, reading almost anything as permissible by the attorney judgment rule. Does the book discuss this issue?
January 27, 2011, 12:49 pmSammy Finkelman says:
You can see some proof of this bias in that cost of the book is $81 ($90 list price) – the author, (who presumably thinks the price is reasonable) of course, is a lawyer.
January 27, 2011, 12:51 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
Why should judges be lawyers at all? If a lawyer can’t make clear to a mentally competent lay person how a particular law applies in a particular case, then either the law or the lawyer is inadequate. We might have better laws if lawyers were disqualified from being judges.
January 27, 2011, 1:00 pmSteve says:
I wonder if Prof. Reynolds is willing to address the similarly distressing lawyer-law professor bias. Why should his law degree make him any more qualified to teach law than the next guy?
January 27, 2011, 1:02 pmFub says:
The book is based on case law, and therefore on appellate court behavior. In my limited experience, just noticing local trial courts cases that made news, it appears that the trial court judges bend over backward procedurally for in pro per plaintiffs, even if eventually ruling against them on substantive merits of the case.
In my neck of the woods there was a perennial in pro per litigant who filed dozens if not hundreds of suits over the years, mostly challenging local government actions. She even filed one complaint entirely in iambic pentameter.
She prevailed in only one case that I recall. On that one she was absolutely correct on the law from the beginning. As I recall the county had tried to pull a fast one in violation of state law, and richly deserved to lose the case.
Only after 30-40 years of meritless suits did the courts declare her a vexatious litigant.
Any lawyer who behaved the same way would likely have been disbarred after the first suit.
January 27, 2011, 1:03 pmWonks Anonymous says:
Why not mention the author’s name in the body of your post?
January 27, 2011, 1:05 pmOrin Kerr says:
Why not mention the author’s name in the body of your post?
I blame Eugene’s lawyer-judge bias.
January 27, 2011, 1:08 pmLior says:
I’ve always supported having legal malpractice cases being decided by a panel of medical doctors.
January 27, 2011, 1:13 pmjosh says:
OK’s snark aside, I was thinking the same thing as Wonks. Why no name of the author?
January 27, 2011, 1:19 pmJoseph S says:
If the video is anything to go by, the book is a waste of time. They ask why Congress can refuse to pay for a doctor giving advice about abortions but not for a public defender to challenge the constitutionality of a law. They don’t seem to realize that there’s a thing called the Constitution which guarantees effective assistance of counsel, which includes telling the client the law is null and void. Even if there’s a right to abortion (which is questionable), there is nowhere in the constitution which gives a right to effective assistance of physician. Therefore Congress can constrain doctors, but not lawyers.
The main problems are in malpractice suits. But that isn’t a systematic bias.
(yes, long complex statutes do help the legal profession, but statutes are usually long and complex because of lobbying legislators rather than judicial intervention.)
January 27, 2011, 1:28 pmAndrew says:
I can only imagine that you have never practiced in a tribal court where the judges are non-lawyers. It is a never-ending nightmare of terrible rulings.
January 27, 2011, 1:31 pmdht says:
Isn’t this what juries are supposed to be?
January 27, 2011, 1:35 pmSteve says:
In a related context, the federal government can and does bar lawyers receiving government subsidies (Legal Aid) from pursuing public-interest lawsuits challenging government policies. As a matter of historical curiosity, this came about because the Governor and Attorney General of California (two gentlemen named Reagan and Meese) got sick and tired of being sued by Legal Aid and subsequently found themselves in a position to do something about it.
The flip side of this coin would be prohibiting corporations which receive government subsidies from lobbying the government, which comes down to using government funds to procure more government funds. I don’t expect to see that restriction in my lifetime.
January 27, 2011, 1:35 pmSteve says:
I practice before arbitration panels that are often composed of non-lawyers. It’s not that they are unable to understand complex statutes, although that is sometimes a problem. It’s that they think even the simplest statute is merely advisory.
If you hate the rule of law and think every case should be decided based upon principles of empathy and gut feeling, you definitely want to get the lawyers out of the business of deciding cases.
January 27, 2011, 1:38 pmyankee says:
ZOMG judges who know something about the law? FRAUD!!!!
I suppose you could get some judges from the ranks of J.D.’s who decided they really wanted to be a chef? Or maybe a system where you take J.D.’s straight out of law school, put them in charge of traffic court, and systematically promote them to higher courts over the course of their careers, so they never actually practice law?
January 27, 2011, 1:40 pmMartinned says:
I don’t think the implication is that judges should be non-jurists, i.e. people not learned in the law. Rather, the idea is that they shouldn’t necessarily be lawyers, i.e. people admitted to the bar. Instead, they could be drawn from legal academia (sorry for that one, but it has to be mentioned as an option) or – Europe style – educated for the job straight out of law school. (Feast your eyes on the école nationale de la magistrature in Bordeaux for a classic example. Here’s wiki for the non-francophones.)
January 27, 2011, 1:43 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
That just means that the laws need to be more explicit, or better argued. Nothing will prevail against stupidity or bad faith, of course, but that’s not a matter of the judge’s not being a lawyer.
January 27, 2011, 1:52 pmMartinned says:
P.S. Of course, a third place where you can find jurists who are not lawyers (other than at a law school graduation ceremony or a law school faculty meeting) is pretty much everywhere else in the economy. Loads of people with law degrees work in jobs that don’t require them to practice law, both in the public and in the private sector. Just look at the organigram of the DoJ for a moment, and consider how many of those people practice law for a living. Most notably, the OLC and the OLA don’t, but still the people that work there are among the most knowledgeable jurists in the country.
January 27, 2011, 1:54 pmFederal Dog says:
“I can only imagine that you have never practiced in a tribal court where the judges are non-lawyers. It is a never-ending nightmare of terrible rulings.”
Yeah, I can’t even imagine the appellate landscape were non-lawyers put on the bench. It’s bad enough now.
January 27, 2011, 2:01 pmMartinned says:
You mean like this guy, the current president of the European Court of Justice:
January 27, 2011, 2:03 pmMartinned says:
Or, as an example of what a career in the French judiciary would look like, the French Advocate-General Yves Bot:
January 27, 2011, 2:07 pmDon Miller says:
I am not sold that all Judges need law school. (disclaimer, I am not an attorney nor a judge)
They need orientation on procedures, policies, rules. They should be familiar with the law. But Judges should primarily be people with sound decision making skills, able to hear both sides of an argument and make a decision.
They need to be able to logically explain their decision to others.
They can hire lawyers as clerks to put it in the right format as necessary.
I would support a two track system in Law School, if we insist on Law School being a prerequisite. Traditional Track for people training to pass the bar and become attorneys. Another track for people training to become Judges.
While I support the ABA’s right to voice their opinion on judges, I have long been uncomfortable with the weight that Congress, and in my State, our State Legislature give them in determining who is qualified to be a Judge.
January 27, 2011, 2:10 pmNo Theory of Jurisprudence says:
In some industries, the thoughtful participants with bargaining power always choose arbitration, and often-times the arbitrators are non-lawyers. Which is to say that in the free market many people actively pursue, and are willing to pay for, the benefit of having legal questions answered by non-lawyers.
Where I am from, Justices of the Peace do not have to be lawyers.
January 27, 2011, 2:11 pmSteve says:
In all my years of handling arbitrations, I have yet to find a single client who wants their commercial dispute decided by a non-lawyer. Yes, several of the major arbitration forums have non-lawyers on their roster of arbitrators, but that doesn’t imply thoughtful participants with bargaining power want to use them. When two sophisticated parties make a deal they virtually always want disputes to be resolved by either a court or a lawyer/arbitrator, because the rule of law has value to them.
January 27, 2011, 2:20 pmDan says:
That is actually how many judicial systems work. This practice is particularly associated with the “inquisitorial” system of civil code systems (e.g., France), but some hybrid systems (e.g., Germany) do this as well. The thought is that determining what facts are sufficiently supported by the evidence and how particular laws apply to them is a different skill set from determining how to get the best result for a particular client, so each should be a separate career path. I leave to others to evaluate which is best, but many successful legal systems do treat attorney practice and the judicial vocation as completely separate career paths (though both complete the same law school programs).
January 27, 2011, 2:20 pmrpt says:
Arbitration clauses are generally imposed by the person with the greater bargaining power; it is not a market determination. Arbitration is some times cheaper and more fair, sometimes not.
January 27, 2011, 2:25 pmAndrew says:
I have a hard time putting it better than Steve did:
I’ll add that’s especially dangerous in criminal cases where people are accused of heinous things. The law can be crystal clear and perfectly explained, and the judge will still rule against a defendant because of the crimes alleged. Making the judges lawyers isn’t a perfect way to eliminate the problem, but it works pretty well.
January 27, 2011, 2:28 pmJon Roland says:
I have long proposed that the legal profession be split into at least three distinct and somewhat competing branches: advocacy (for barristers, lawyers representing clients in cases), compliance (for judges and company lawyers trying to keep their clients out of trouble), and support (paralegals, solicitors).
As in the constitutional separation of powers to avoid excessive and unbalanced concentrations of power, the legal profession needs to be separated and the branches allowed to check one another.
As one lawyer in a courthouse conversation once put it, “We [lawyers] own the courts and we make the rules.” That is a formula for tyrannical oppression of laypersons. It is the position of predators toward prey. It is making “lawyer” a title of nobility.
January 27, 2011, 2:44 pmNo Theory of Jurisprudence says:
Yet the parties are free to stipulate that only lawyers may arbitrate the dispute, but don’t typically do so, at least in my industry.
January 27, 2011, 2:49 pmDavid Sucher says:
“Need to be” = “woulda, coulda, shoulda”
Yes and we should have smarter and better people.
January 27, 2011, 2:49 pmMartinned says:
@Jon Roland: A relatively easy way to get there is to make it harder to be admitted to the bar. In most places in the world, including the UK and here (the Netherlands) it takes several years of apprenticeship and exams, which is why in both countries only a small minority of jurists (= law graduates) join the bar. I myself couldn’t even become a lawyer if I wanted to, because my degree in European law left me with a deficiency in procedural law that I would have to fix before I could even start the process of becoming a lawyer. It doesn’t stop me from giving legal advice, though.
January 27, 2011, 2:53 pmNo Theory of Jurisprudence says:
If you are saying that “market determinations” only occur when two parties have equal bargaining power, I disagree. If you are suggesting that a regulation prohibiting parties from arbitrating agreements makes agreements between parties with disparate bargaining power more “market determined,” I disagree. I think I need you to tell me what you mean, because I do not think unequal bargaining power shows a lack of market determination, as virtually all market transactions involve participants with unequal bargaining power.
I am not contending that arbitration is cheaper or more fair. I am stating that in some industries the participants prefer group A to group B in deciding who should adjudicate disputes, and group A includes non-lawyers.
January 27, 2011, 2:54 pmDave N. says:
Two minor factual quibbles. The restictions are on the activities of Legal Services Corporation, which is a quasi-governmental agency. Additionally, Ed Meese was never California Attorney General. However, he was Attorney General of the United States under President Reagan.
I disagree with the snark of your second paragraph, since private corporations are not quasi-governmental.
January 27, 2011, 2:55 pmNo Theory of Jurisprudence says:
I think the more accurate statement is that sophisticated parties typically want disputes resolved by arbitrators through arbitration precisely because of the differences between an arbitration and the dispute resolution traditionally mandated by “the rule of law.” If sophisticated parties were so committed to the rule of law — rather than, say, business considerations — they would use arbitrations to avoid the lawlessness of juries, but would still go through the procedural motions mandated by the law, and would demand that the arbitrators follow the law. Sophisticated parties do neither of these things, however. I am suggesting that its “lawlessness” is what makes arbitration such an appealing dispute resolution method.
January 27, 2011, 2:58 pmJon Roland says:
You would in the computer industry. I have been asked to arbitrate such cases, involving technical issues the lawyers could not understand. In a couple of such cases I found neither party understood them, either, and that the resolution came with me just fixing the technical problem for them.
January 27, 2011, 3:34 pmCJColucci says:
1. D’uh.
January 27, 2011, 3:40 pm2. Nothing can be done about it.
Steve says:
Based on my own experience, I think the #1 reason sophisticated parties prefer arbitration clauses is to avoid juries.
I think the #2 reason is to save money on legal expenses. This explains why they don’t routinely contract for judicial review of the arbitration award or other procedural protections; in the long run, guaranteeing a right of appeal will help you in some cases and hurt you in others, but it will definitely cost a lot of money along the way. There is an exception for specific, high-stakes contracts where I have definitely seen parties contract for a more rigorous arbitration process.
I do not believe the availability of an arbitrator roster that includes non-lawyers is in any way a positive for sophisticated parties, and in fact I believe the opposite to be true. In reality, I don’t recall the issue ever coming up before the moment when it comes time to select an actual arbitrator. (There are times when you have a particularly weak case that you might be in favor of a non-lawyer arbitrator; but no one expects at the time of the initial agreement to be litigating a weak case down the road.)
I plan to put this to the test, though. The next time I draft a contract or settlement agreement, instead of language like “the arbitrator shall be chosen pursuant to the rules of the American Arbitration Association” I will write “the arbitrator shall be a licensed attorney chosen pursuant to the rules of the American Arbitration Association.” I do not expect any client or opposing party to object to this concept, but if they do then I will have learned something.
January 27, 2011, 3:40 pmSteve says:
You’re right, I haven’t dealt much with technical subject areas and it’s important for your arbitrator to have the relevant expertise. I would suggest, though, that the parties still would be unlikely to prefer a non-lawyer to a lawyer; it is just that they are relatively indifferent because there is a different type of expertise that is far more important. Most people would view a a lawyer with the relevant industry expertise to be the ideal arbitrator.
January 27, 2011, 3:43 pmloki13 says:
The trouble with PersonfromPorlock’s ideas are that they come from a fundamental misapprehension of how this “law thing” works.
People see some high profile cases and think that judges just, well, should make the “right” decision (aka what that person thinks they should have done) on the merits of the issue. Gay marriage is good or bad! Gun rights are awesome or sucky! It’s all simple stuff, confused by those darn lawyers!
What they don’t see (because this isn’t covered by the press and most of our favorite TV programs) is the un-fun stuff. How is the untrained person who gets elevated to judge going to:
1. Decide on a hearsay objection in trial?
2. Decide on the applicability of aiding and abetting in a tort action brought in New Jersey under Italian law (conflict)?
3. Undersand if Maine can properly exercise long-arm jurisdiction over Mom&Pop ByteShack in Mobile, Ala.?
4. Do an Erie/Gasperini analysis of whether a state law is substantive or procedural and should apply in Federal Court?
And so on…
January 27, 2011, 3:49 pmNo Theory of Jurisprudence says:
I agree, but then why not just have a bench trial? There must be some aspect of the legal system that sophisticated parties detest besides juries, because they routinely throw out the baby with the bathwater.
It might explain it, but so might this explanation: The parties have as little trust in the Courts of Appeals as they do in juries.
I would be interested to hear what industry you practice in. Complicated construction defect disputes often involve technical issues beyond the expertise of lawyers, but not architects and engineers, and therefore arbitration panels that include architects or engineers are, in some instances, preferable to lawyer-only panels. Indeed architects and engineers are frequently selected by parties to sit on arbitration panels. It is not as if non-lawyers exist in arbitration pools for no reason; they are in these pools because parties are selecting them to arbitrate.
I am sure they won’t object the first time, but might be expected to years later after they have suffered a bad result at the hands of an arbitration panel attributed to the fact that the lawyers just could not grasp the technical facts of the case (which is the same reason sophisticated parties often do not want juries to decide disputes). By the time the dispute comes around, your client may want a non-lawyer on the panel, or may want your lawyer arbitrator and the other side’s lawyer arbitrator to select a non-lawyer arbitrator (on a three person panel) but you’ve now managed to bargain away that opportunity.
January 27, 2011, 3:55 pmNo Theory of Jurisprudence says:
And yet parties often select non-lawyers to arbitrate their cases when given the opportunity to do so.
January 27, 2011, 3:56 pmBruce Hayden says:
I ran into the same problem that the poster did in tribal courts, in the Phoenix Justice Courts. Same case went twice up to the district court on appeal. The argument was that there was no such thing as an inchoate or preparatory civil infraction under Arizona law. Neither Justice of the Peace was a lawyer, and neither apparently understood the difference between attempting an act and completing it, and that attempting a civil infraction was not actionable (think about attempted speeding). On appeal, the District Court first just remanded the case. The second time, it wrote a two page opinion remanding and excoriating to the lower court that it shouldn’t have seen the case the second time, and that this had better not happen again.
January 27, 2011, 4:28 pmAnderson says:
There are TRIAL courts, and there are TRIBAL courts.
January 27, 2011, 4:48 pmJay says:
I suspect OLC attorney-advisors would think they “practice law” for a living just as much as someone whose practice consists of advising corporate clients on compliance does. Plus, most OLC lawyers are unlikely to stay for their entire careers; they’ll eventually end up litigating somewhere, unless they become academics.
January 27, 2011, 4:56 pmAnderson says:
Yah, I don’t understand how advising the U.S. on the law is not “practicing law.” Do they have to be licensed?
January 27, 2011, 5:08 pmMaureen001 says:
In this day and age, it’s almost forgotten that it was not always the case that judges are drawn from the lawyer pool. I can still recall that the first vote I cast in California included a ballot initiative mandating that all judges must be lawyers. I was 18 years old, uneducated in legal proceedings and judicial process, and I decided that it was a reasonable requirement. Two decades later I learned that in Monterey County alone, passage of this law unseated two honored judges who were not lawyers. Both of these judges had almost spotless records in terms of not being overturned on appeal — definitely superior records to judges since then. Today I firmly believe it was a huge mistake, one made to the detriment of California citizens and justice in this state. Never has law been more rigid, more esoteric than it is today. It puts the element of ‘exclusive’ right into the heart of the law, exclusive in the sense of excluding some and including others. This has done a lot to enforce a lack of respect for and faith in our judicial system by the general public, in the same sense that many have come to reject religion filtered through a given church; the idea that the only way to get to either justice or God is through a representative, be it lawyer or minister. It stays on my mind that in most (if not all) states Abraham Lincoln could not become a lawyer today because most (if not all) state bars prohibit someone from taking the bar exam if they have not first passed an approved program at an approved institution. It is not the knowledge that is required, it is the pedigree. And that idea is carried through with the lawyer-judge connection.
January 27, 2011, 5:35 pmCalderon says:
Martinned — I don’t think your examples are all that different from what the US does now. There are a number of appellate (and Supreme Court justices) who got their law degrees, became professors, optionally consulted with government officials, then became judges without ever being “practicing” lawyers. I’m assuming the book in question proffers a more radical suggestion of having people as judges who did not go to law school and had careers well outside being an attorney, law professor, legal advisor, etc.
Also, the second person you cite doesn’t bear on the argument. Your quote of his career states:
Plentyof US judges have careers as prosecutors; indeed, I’d bet a disproportionate number given the relatively small percentage of lawyers who are prosecutors.
January 27, 2011, 8:10 pmCurt F. says:
Either because or rule of law does not mean what you think it means. I can’t tell which.
January 27, 2011, 9:09 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
It’s interesting that those who object to non-lawyers as judges seem to feel that the only way to keep dolts off the bench is to filter them through law school.
As far as non-lawyer judges’ lack of legal training goes, that’s a feature, not a bug: the lawyers have to argue the law before a layman, which means the law has to be made comprehensible to laymen. The only thing the judge then has to do is filter out the BS, which is something a few of us NAL types have learned to do fairly well in non-lawyerly endeavors. For the record, I’m not suggesting grabbing people off the street, asking them if they’re lawyers and if they aren’t, throwing them on the bench.
January 27, 2011, 10:02 pmJon Roland says:
Judges need training, just a different kind of training, and a separate career track. My proposal above is for training in legal history, linguistics, and philosophy rather than advocacy. Instead of taking a course in “con-law” focused on using court precedents to win cases for clients, it would be a course in the Constitution itself, its origins and original meaning, and in the original meaning of its legal principles.
We should appoint federal judges to a single large judicial pool from which judges would be assigned at random to courts for limited terms and to cases. This would tend to depoliticize the process, and judges would have no upward career path. Not all their time would be spend judging cases. Much of their time would be devoted to research, teaching, writing, clerking, and administration.
January 27, 2011, 10:20 pmJon Roland says:
However, I would not require formal academic training. Writing as book or peer-reviewed articles on legal history, linguistics, and philosophy should qualify one without a degree or other credential.
January 27, 2011, 10:29 pmloki13 says:
I notice your response is completely non-responsive to what I wrote. There are a number of areas of the law that are, um, difficult. And it has nothing to do with “writing the laws.” It has to do with our system of laws, with the interplay of various laws and doctrines, and with our common law.
Try reading a few real property cases. Explain to me how you’d deal with them. Let alone the examples I gave you.
ps- Jon Roland- just knowing the Constitution won’t get you very far. Contra to popular belief, the vast majority of cases have nothing to do with the Constitution. And pure application of the (vague) text isn’t helpful when you’re dealing with novel and specific facts on the grounds.
January 28, 2011, 10:09 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
Eh? Those people are “lawyers, i.e. people admitted to the bar.”
January 28, 2011, 10:38 amMartinned says:
I got the impression from the information in the original post that the objection was specifically with judges drawn from the ranks of barristers/litigators. Compared to that, giving in-house legal advice (like the OLC does, more or less) is already an entirely different gig. As the earlier comments have argued aplenty, it wouldn’t make much sense to suggest that judges ought to be lay people, untrained in the law.
Yves Bot is a good example of the continental way of doing things especially if you remember that a prosecutor in France is not the same thing as a prosecutor in the US. It is much less partisan and much more magistrate-like. (I don’t know about France specifically, but under Dutch criminal procedure certain things the police might want to do have to be OK’ed only by the prosecutor, not by the judge. For example, this applies to “arrest warrants”.) If you look at Bot’s CV, you see that he keeps getting promoted from deputy to full prosecutor to senior, from the provinces to Paris, and from the regular courts to the Courts of Appeals, until he finally ended up as Principal State Prosecutor at the Court of Appeal in Paris, the highest prosecutor job in the country. At no point during his career was he in private practice working as a litigator.
January 28, 2011, 10:48 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
We don’t have rigid divisions the way there are in the UK, and perhaps in other parts of Europe.
January 28, 2011, 10:57 amJust Dropping By says:
Except that’s what law school is largely like already. The vast majority of law school classes are directed at teaching the history and theory of the subject matter, not how to argue the point in court. The only class I had in law school with an emphasis on advocacy skills was “Lawyering Process,” which simulated taking a case from an initial client interview all the way through appellate argument.
January 28, 2011, 11:11 amMartinned says:
I know, and I took the author to mean that perhaps you should.
January 28, 2011, 11:15 amJon Roland says:
Of course, and I am not proposing such training in compliance law be confined to the U.S. and state constitutions, only that it put more emphasis on them as a foundation, and build on them in examining other areas of law, which have more to do with constitutions than you seem to think. Just because most cases don’t require constitutional argument does not mean they are not subject to constitutional constraints, even if only subtle ones. “Due process”, for example, is part of every case, even if it is not in active dispute.
January 28, 2011, 12:50 pmJon Roland says:
The kind of training for compliance law I envision would often coincide with what is already taught to future litigators. I am not saying there would be no overlap. But I have audited enough law school classes to discern that the way they teach “history and theory” involves examining precedents that are expected to be cited in litigation, so it really is preparation for trial argument. My approach for a compliance track would also examine cases and arguments that did not prevail, to get at the roots of the underlying legal concepts. You don’t get an accurate or complete history or theory by only examining the winners.
January 28, 2011, 1:00 pmMr Weebles says:
I used to work in sales at LexisNexis and many of my coworkers were former attorneys.
Most of them, when asked why they were in sales instead of practicing law, said it was because they just plain didn’t enjoy the legal profession as much as they thought they would when they decided on law school.
One guy told me he thought it would be like the movies and he would stand before the bar daily, protecting the rights of the downtrodden (!), but found himself reviewing contracts all day instead.
January 28, 2011, 1:33 pmloki13 says:
Perhaps on an abstract level. But I am not sure how making federal and state constitutions foundational training will help in real property cases, or the majority of civil litigation, or probate matters, or construing contracts, or civil procedure (other than basic due process concerns ;) ), or evidence, or running a trial (how does a grounding in state and federal constitutions help in ruling on a hearsay objection, except in specialized cases like a criminal trial in California, when even then it is subject to other specialized rules?).
January 28, 2011, 2:11 pmMichael B says:
“… This book argues that these lawyer-judges instinctively favor the legal profession in their decisions and that this bias has far-reaching and deleterious effects on American law.”
Well, yes, certainly on the instinctive level, but beyond the merely instinctive level as well, there’s a thoroughgoing intellectual/ideological level that subtends and justifies such exclusionary and, in effect, self-referential views within the profession. The fact that much of the law can be arcane is but one of the more benign aspects of such views; though more thoughtful and astute judges should be able to overcome
It’s a pity, and it’s telling of the current state of the profession, primarily of judges/jurists, that this even needs to be argued. This largely reduces to the (seeming) fact that most judges are not philosophically serious or astute – and are not in possession of much backbone in this area – beyond a reading/comprehension of au courant trends/fashions.
January 28, 2011, 2:35 pmMaureen001 says:
And herein lies the attorney influence that is the topic of this thread. The connection between real property laws and their grounding in the Constitution has become lost in day-to-day legal proceedings. How much influence has the day-to-day had on the writing of such laws? When was it that we, as society, decided it was O.K. for government to tell land owners how and when they may use their real property when there were existing tort laws that addressed any ill effects from such use? The result of not recognizing the connection, which is not abstract at all if one does not take a plodder’s approach to it, is the likes of a judicial ruling that eminent domain is just peachy for purposes of redistribution by government to other more favored private owners for purposes of tax base, or any other specious reason.
January 28, 2011, 2:35 pmMichael B says:
Per my comment above, it was Wilhelm Weischedel, among others, who showed that meaning cannot occur within a strictly closed system, that every system either overtly or inherently necessarily takes its meaning from larger systems within which it occurs and subsists – and outward until some ultimate meaning (again overtly/consciously, tacitly or without conscious awareness) is being relied upon.
January 28, 2011, 2:53 pmloki13 says:
Maureen,
This is my exact point. Eminent domain is a takings issue under the 5th Am. So, for that matter, are regulatory takings. Laymen think they “know” real property cases because they have heard of Kelo and have an impression of it? O Rly?
What does the 5th Am have to do with a fee simple subject to executory limitation? Does the Constitution speak to whether the covenant runs with the land or not? To horizontal and vertical privity? To the dominant tenement (and the subservient one) – which is not nearly as kinky as it sounds?
In short, there are people that hear a few cases reported in the media and think that every little thing is a constitutional issue. The drudgery of real legal work isn’t all gay marriage and Kelo.
They’re not. And if you believe they are, I have an estate called Blackacre I’d like to sell you.
January 28, 2011, 2:54 pmMichael B says:
Per above, again and now more directly, this is (one of the reasons) why the individual mandate and ObamaCare in general – within federalist and limited govt. moral/ethical and therein philosophical considerations – can and should be deemed unconstitutional.
A rather terse summarization of the fact and what would otherwise be a rather extensive argument, but it’s on-point nonetheless, both from a philosophical/social/political pov and, as such, from a legal pov as well. (I.e. the legal pov representing one of the “inner” subsystems referred to above, and, as such, a subsystem within which meaning cannot (genuinely and cogently) inhere in a self-contained sense.
January 28, 2011, 3:11 pmMaureen001 says:
Loki 13:
*ahem* You might want to watch those assumptions you’ve made. I’ve been a real estate broker for over 25 year and, hard to believe — I know, I understood exactly what you were talking about (and I can tell you of an instance when dominant and subservient tenement WAS kinky, but I won’t). Kelo is notorious because it flies so clearly in the face of constitutionally protected rights. Whether or not the legal and judicial community is able to recognize that varies from individual to individual and, IMHO, how steeped they are in the day-to-day, and to what degree they address their day-to-day absent of cognitive recognition of the underlying rights issues.
January 28, 2011, 3:16 pmloki13 says:
Maureen001,
Perfect- because of your specialty knowledge in that field, you have some exposure to the terms of real property law (although there are some areas where you might be … not so up to date). So- extrapolate your knowledge about the hardest *legal* concept you know about because of your specialized training in real estate. Now try carrying that over to a different field. How comfortable would you be doing a conflict of laws analysis (say a tort claim in one state involving parties from multiple states and countries with insurance providers claiming contractual choice of law provisions)? Doing a complex contractual case? Handling an administrative law case?
In short, I read your complaint as this- Kelo is bad because I disagree with it, therefore it flies so clearly in the face of constitutionally protected rights *as I understand them.* Since I would rule differently based on my common sense in this issue, and I have read the Constitution, I think that all a judge needs to do is understand the Constitution, even though *almost nothing a judge does* (in terms of running trials, or actual decisions) has to do with the Constitution….
You have heard of state courts, right?
January 28, 2011, 3:40 pmTed says:
Don’t do it Maureen, at least not without title insurance.
January 28, 2011, 4:09 pmMaureen001 says:
I’m so sorry for you, Loki 13! Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.
I’m not saying that there is no need for experts in the legal field, but I’m also not willing to say that, given adequate motivation and prep time, I could not do what you suggest. Of course there is a need for expertise in any given field. But what you’ve so very clearly demonstrated is the perception and judgment division that takes place between too many folks in the legal community and the general public. Truth, to you, is what can be proven in a judicial procedure. Truth, to the rest of us, is true whether or not it can be demonstrated under some set of judicial rules. Truth, in the case of Kelo, is not understood by the general public because they are not read in on the nuances of expertise, but to the general public, it flies in the face of the Constitution as understood by everyone else. Aristotle’s argument was that things are “true of any case as such”, as opposed to “true of each case in fact”, clearly a depiction of division I mentioned above.
January 28, 2011, 4:13 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Oh, god. Spare me from realtors who think they know real property law because they had to take a few hours of class to get their license. Contrary to what you wrote, real property law is not “grounded in the Constitution” at all; indeed, its groundings long predate the constitution. (Kelo — which was wrongly decided — has nothing to do with real property law per se; it’s about the Takings clause, and thus property generally, not real property.) The Constitution has no answers to virtually any actual legal issue involving real property.
January 28, 2011, 4:30 pmMaureen001 says:
David M. Nieporent: And spare me from lawyers who generalize not only about real estate brokers but everyone else who is not a lawyer. You have no idea what education or training I have, but you sure think you do. If you read my post again, this time without your bias veiling your eyes, you will see that I made no such claim about real estate law as you ascribed to me. I said that I knew what those terms meant, and I do.
The Constitution itself is based on teachings neither you nor most of the Western world have familiarity with, so while you can accurately state that real property law is grounded in practice and laws that predate the Constitution, you are ignorant of the relevance between those long-ago precedences and the correlation with our Constitution, which also has a great deal of its basis in those selfsame long-ago precedences.
January 28, 2011, 4:38 pmTed says:
I’m a little confused here. Are you suggesting that with a little motivation and prep time you could be a lawyer? Good for you.
But aren’t you also then admitting that there is a difference between lawyers and realtors? I mean, you are correct in believing so. But if there is a difference, and in order to do what loki13 suggested, you must do something other than what you currently do, why do you try to draw similarities between lawyers and realtors? They obviously do different things and are experts in different things. So the real question is, would you rather have a property law lawyer-judge or a realtor-judge decide your case? Which do you think would be more likely to arrive at a legally correct result? Which do you think would be more likely to arrive at a result you like?
January 28, 2011, 4:43 pmTed says:
I’m curious about this. You have any cites? Because I’m fairly certain that ancestral documents and idea which lead to American property law are quite younger than the traceable history of the Constitution. But I could be wrong…
January 28, 2011, 4:46 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
You keep missing my point, that if a law is ‘difficult’, it needs to be clarified to the point where it’s comprehensible to a layman (who is, after all, responsible for obeying it), and that lay jurists would be an excellent way of encouraging this. Lawyers schmoozing with lawyer-judges just encourages inbred law.
January 28, 2011, 5:35 pmMaureen001 says:
Ted: If you define being a lawyer as being prepared to do the things Loki 13 specifically said, conflict of laws analysis (say a tort claim in one state involving parties from multiple states and countries with insurance providers claiming contractual choice of law provisions), doing a complex contractual case, and handling an administrative law case (provided it is clarified what “doing” and “handling” mean), then yes, with prep and motivation I could be a lawyer. Contrarily, I could also do the necessary prep and education necessary to, say, write a conflict of laws analysis and not be a lawyer. Could I represent a client in a judicial proceeding involving a complex contractual case or an administrative law case? Of course not. I’m not licensed to do so, nor do I have the experience and knowledge to adequately and professionally represent a client in that capacity. (“But Your Honor-ness, why am I in contempt of this court? I like you!”)Could I research and argue points of law in such cases? I believe I could, given -as I said- proper motivation and prep time.
In my decades of experience in real estate I saw very few disputes go to court over points of law. Most were, to be honest, conflicts between personalities exacerbated into legal actions by attorneys who were most comfortable in the courtroom setting. I am not saying the attorneys created the legal disputes; I am saying that is where they were comfortable resolving the disputes which, IMHO, could have just as easily been settled by a conflict resolution counselor because of the personal nature (sometimes between buyer and seller, sometimes involving a real estate agent and a buyer and/or seller)of the conflicts. There was occasionally a truly legal issue to be decided, mostly in the case of fraud on the part of one party or the other, but that was the exception, not the rule. Would I want a judge with experience in law vs real estate? I’m not sure how to answer that. If the real issue is a personality conflict, then neither is necessary and what is really happening is a parental-like resolution imposed under the color of authority. If an actual point of real property law or procedure is at issue, then there is no difference in the expertise necessary. But, back to the thread topic, does that expertise mandate prior experience and training as a lawyer? I don’t think so.
And actually, real estate is not my current profession. Want to talk about health care? ;D
January 28, 2011, 5:43 pmTed says:
Maureen,
I agree that not all client issues involve legal problems. But I sense you are confusing the purpose of a judge and the purpose of a mediator or other alternative dispute resolution facilitator. A judge should not give a shit about the personalities of the litigants, other than in the capacity of a fact finder and only if it affects the credibility of testimony or other evidence.
A court is there to render a decision based on the applications of relevant laws to the facts. Typically, a judge’s job is to determine what law applies (not to determine facts) and to ensure that legal actions progress according to the procedural laws. That’s it for most judges.
Does one need to be a “lawyer” to do that? Well, it sure seems like it would help, since being a lawyer means you went to law school and at least had some exposure to the formal application of laws. Most law school curriculum are like 90% learning and understanding the application of laws through reading appellate cases. We do very, very little fact pattern analysis or evidence development.
I guess I don’t understand what you mean by a “lawyer.” Who else has spent years of their lives learning about the application of laws and the interaction of procedural and substantive laws? For sure, some lawyers don’t do that at all. Like in the blue book citation thread, some lawyers never cite anything, correctly or otherwise. But I can’t think of anyone other than a lawyer would have such exposure and experience.
January 28, 2011, 7:00 pmloki13 says:
Maureen,
I still don’t think you understand your own proposal. Imagine you became a judge, suddenly. You’re given a case. You spend your few months studying the legal issues behind the complaint and response. Let’s assume you do a good job behind that. Then come the motions in limine which bring in different issues. And say some of them raise various procedural issues and some raise substantive issues (like excluding certain evidence or testimony). So you take a few months studying that. Oh, and a few months studying the overall procedural rules to make sure you’re handling the case correctly.
Then the trial begins. On the first day, an attorney makes a hearsay objection. The opposing counsel says that a) it wasn’t offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted and b) it goes to state of mind. You then have to go into recess for a few months to lean hearsay. You return to the first day of the trial and a piece of evidence is introduced. Objection! There goes a few months while you learn some more evidence law. And so on… then you give a verdict. You take a few months to write your opinion and get your citations correct. Then comes the motion for rehearing… and a few more months.
At the end of your decade-long trial, you are given a new case. But it involves a completely different matter (court of general jurisdiction, you know)… so the process begins anew.
PS- PersonfromPorlock, it’s not just the laws. First, there’s the question of writing laws so generally that anyone can “understand them” but that leads to them being so vague that application leads to “common sense” (aka whim) vs. being so specific that they’re nigh incomprehensible. Second is the interplay of various laws when they’re against each other (very few cases are about the operation of a single law). Then there’s other issues, like procedural issues, or equitable doctrines (look up estoppel in your state statutes…. c’mon, it’ll be fun!).
I don’t write this to be superior. I thought I had a good idea of the law until I went to law school. The first thing I learned was how little I actually knew. I recommend, for either of you, going to watch some real court proceedings on some completely mundane matters- you may change your opinions.
January 28, 2011, 7:24 pmohwilleke says:
Lawyers and lawyer-judges only seem bad until you see the utterly disasterously awful stuff that non-lawyer judges and pro se parties do.
It is a bit like democracy being the worst form of government until you consider all of the others.
Yes, some countries have separate legal professions for judges and for lawyers (sometimes more than one separate kind of lawyer), even though all are legally trained and that does work out. But, even in those cases, the American lawyer-judges who are judges almost exclusively as a second career tend IMHO to be better – in part because they are more elite individuals (civil law countries have far more judges per lawyers than we do with less selectively appointments) and in part because lawyer-judges have a better sense of what is going on behind the scenes and have political savvy that civil law judges often lack.
January 28, 2011, 11:08 pmMaureen001 says:
Ted: Who else amasses the knowledge of a law school graduate? How about a law school professor? How about someone who has the interest, buys the books in the student bookstore and reads them, a la Lincoln? How about one of those two lay judges who had each been on the bench for over 20 years when California voters, myself included, said they couldn’t do any longer what they’d been doing so very well?
It seems so very logical today that judges ought to be lawyers, but is that because it’s been the case for well over 30 years, and trending toward that at least another 30 years before that? You may well be correct that the identified role of a judge is to decide what laws apply and to make sure legal actions follow rules of procedure. But it is a fact that this current day practice is not the practice of history; there was and is an alternative. Do we need an alternative? That’s not the point of the thread. The subject discussed is the influence of having been lawyers first has on the decisions judges make. And the comments and side-tracked arguments presented indicates that yes, there is an influence, and in the case of the comments by lawyers in this thread, it is a profound influence that seems to deprive y’all of consideration of any alternative.
Loki 13: I’m not making a proposal. I’m pointing out that there has been an alternative reality, one that existed far longer in time than the mere decades in which our legal system has evolved to support former lawyer/judges exclusively. I’ve also mentioned that in at least one instance that I am familiar with two lay judges with documented records of minimal overturn on appeal were ejected from their positions by such a move, and that their rulings-on-appeal records indicate this was not a better situation for the people of Monterey County. This has generated your and Ted’s arguments that lawyer/judges really are better, to your way of thinking.
January 29, 2011, 3:34 amMaureen001 says:
Elite, politically savvy, into the behind-the-scenes. Yep, that’s what it takes to be an outstanding judge in America all right. (sarcasm fully intended).
January 29, 2011, 3:37 amMaureen001 says:
I’m sorry Ted. It’s late, I’m tired, and I’m not going to go into detail about the evolvement of judicial practice among the ancient western societies, as fascinating and pertinent to your question as it is. What I had in mind is that our Founding Dads were blessed to have received classical educations that had them read the writings of the ancients and to know about those societal practices which had influenced the evolvement of judicial systems of European countries, especially England. They were aware of the changing roles of judges throughout the ages, from Aristotle’s Politics which discussed laws in relation to their constitutions (read his Treatise on the Constitution of Athens) to early family gens in Rome followed by the 12 Tablets (which was a veritable prognostication of the Magna Carta that followed in England in that it limited the authority of the ruler and guaranteed certain rights under law to the ruled), to the Judges (who weren’t judges in today’s sense, but leaders/administrators/military commanders who had the power to decide conflicts without appeal) identified and described in the Old Testament Book of Judges, et cetera. Our Founders not only knew of these historical events, for the most part they read the original authors and often in their native Greek or Latin, French or German. And knowing what they did, they discussed the flaws and drawbacks of each and arrived at the plan to base the Constitution on the restriction of government power (12 Tablets, Magna Carta come into play here) rather than concocting a government by ascribing its authority.
That’s it for tonight. If I find the time, being one of those rare creatures who has actually begun a small business in the face of all this economic downturn, I may write about this on my own blog because it interests me greatly.
January 29, 2011, 4:06 amloki13 says:
Of the 55 framers, 32 (or 35, depending on how you count) were lawyers. Makes you think, doesn’t it?
If your point is just that is is possible for someone to know the law without the benefit of law school we are in no disagreement. While 99% of pro se petitions are absolute crap, there are those precious few that do it right. Given enough time and enough resources, there are jailhouse lawyers that can do a damn fine job.
In addition, there are still a few states that allow a person to become a lawyer without law school.
What I really disagree with is this idea that it is an easy thing to do. I have seen many people struggle with the law who went to law school. It’s not easy. And the worst is the people who focus on the Constitution, because it does two main disservices-
1. It shows a complete lack of understanding of how our system intersects with the Constitution. It’s not that you might not be right about some of your opinions, but until you have actually read through a lot of case law and see how it has worked over the years, you don’t really have a good-faith basis for understanding what it is you are attacking.
2. As I keep repeating, the Constitution is almost never a concern in most real, actual, law. Just because that’s what the media reports doesn’t mean the Constitution applies when two parties are arguing in a family law proceeding.
Anyway, I don’t know the circumstance surrounding the two judges you mention. I do know that there are other jurisdictions that allow non-legal types to be judges in small cases and whenever there is, umm, actual law involved the results are disastrous.
January 29, 2011, 9:37 amMaureen001 says:
*sigh* One more time.
I’m not questioning your expertise. No doubt you are a fine lawyer. But the issue in this thread is the influence on judges who are almost all lawyers first, which I believe to be irrefutable, and which you and other lawyers posting on this thread continue to demonstrate so beautifully. It’s O.K. Loki 13. Your job is safe.
Perhaps you aspire to be a judge. Perhaps this is your motivation to keep hammering away on the complexities of law, which you’ve clearly mastered. I have no idea. I just keep repeating that it is not the subject at hand, and that there has been a viable alternative in the not too distant past that we’ve largely abandoned through political means. In my youth I thought this might be desirable and I was part of that political manipulation. Today, given my own life experiences and expanded knowledge of history, I am not so sure.
January 29, 2011, 6:59 pmJon Roland says:
Some of the discussants are arguing past one another. Let us acknowledge that most cases handled by most lawyers and most judges are somewhat mundane and do not involve issues considered important by most members of the general public, such as constitutional issues. But this thread is not about most cases. It is about that subset of cases that are of great interest to the public, and likely to this forum, many if not most of which do involve constitutional issues. Most of these are appellate or criminal, which as practices are generally not mundane in the way the typical practice described by Loki13 are.
The key point is that all cases and issues are not equal, and cannot be meaningfully be averaged to reach general conclusions of interest to the public and to this forum. A single case may be more important than all the cases heard by all the courts in the U.S. for some period of years, and all the lawyers involved in them. The problem posed by the thread is directed to those important cases, which it is especially important to get right. Not many care what is the outcome of BigCorp1 v. BigCorp2. But millions may care very much about some case of U.S. v. John Doe on a point of constitutional rights.
We need a system that can do justice in these important cases, and that includes training lawyers for them. Perhaps no more than one lawyer in a thousand will get such a case in his career, but we want that one to be prepared for it.
January 29, 2011, 7:27 pmloki13 says:
Jon,
Perhaps I am mistaken, but both the original post and many of the comments on this thread are directed at the law in general, not just constitutional law. Unfortunately, there is the current meme that all law must be viewed through the prism of constitutional law, which is just incorrect. And it’s not just BigCorpA v. BigCorpB. If you take any average person’s experience with the legal system, it will likely be:
1. Family law
2. Estates
3. Torts
4. Criminal Law
Only the fourth ever really brings up any constitutional issues, and those are much rarer than the examples we come up with on this board. So yes, millions may care about a constitutional issue, but in terms of what affects them from a legal standpoint, the constitution is rarely in play.
As for your last contention- the lawyers who do raise constitutional issues are fairly well-versed in the subject. I have an important First Amendment issue I’ve been working up for federal court, and I’m proud of the work. Will it be New York Times v. Sullivan? No. But it’s important to my client.
January 29, 2011, 8:56 pmwolfefan says:
I’m enjoying this discussion – thanks to all who have participated thus far. Maureen, if you choose to write at greater length on your blog I would be interested in reading it. Could you post a link?
January 29, 2011, 9:48 pmJon Roland says:
I have seen many such cases that involve constitutional issues, even though in most of them neither the lawyers, the judge, or the parties had a clue how.
In family law I have found a zone free of constitutional due process, in which judges wilfully disregard judicial rules in favor of better-connected parties. It is driven by federal subsidies that enable cronies to make millions feeding from the trough. In one such case, as an intervenor, I filed a writ of habeas corpus to get a parent in possession of a child without legal custody of him to produce the child in court, so he could express his desire to be with the other parent, as he had requested me to help him do. The visiting judge, who had 50 years of experience on the bench, didn’t know what to do with a habeas corpus, and couldn’t grasp it even after I carefully explained it to him. (He wound up caving in to the local corrupt establishment after they threatened him with not getting any more cases if he didn’t.)
In probate courts in Texas I have seen judges trash a millennium of trust law (which is more fundamental than the Constitution), to hand the estate assets to a non-beneficiary with a better-connected law firm.
A related kind of case are competency hearings, subject to much abuse.
Each of those kind of cases need the review of juries of twelve. Judges cannot be trusted.
In many tort cases I have seen crony corruption at work.
That is not to disregard all the cases of legal malpractice that the judges block, or punish any lawyers who might dare to bring them with never winning another case in their courts.
Now of course corruption in its various forms is not necessarily a constitutional issue, but most of it seeks protection in offical immunity, and in many ways of violating due process, such as altering court records or denying parties the right to prove opposing witnesses are lying.
It is possible for a lawyer to spend an entire career largely unaware of legal and judicial corruption, but there is so much of it that it needs to be addressed and remedied. That is what concerns the public.
January 29, 2011, 10:39 pmloki13 says:
Huh? It would be helpful if you could cite some examples. For the family law example, unless you were arguing that Congress had restricted the right to habeas, I am not sure what your constitutional argument was.
Your trust arguments have nothing to do with the Constitution (despite being… um… more foundational?).
Due process is guaranteed, which brings up the interrelated questions-
1. What process is due? This is, of course, some matter of debate, but the constitutional due process is usually a floor.
2. These are state proceedings, and the original Constitution did not guarantee any rights of due process against the states. There are some (see J. Aldridge) who would still claim that these rights are inapplicable against the states.
So what I see here is the usual conflation- you have some kind of complaint about “unfairness” (which is awfully hard to evaluate- just because a judge doesn’t rule in your favor doesn’t mean they caved into the local corrupt establishment) and, therefore, there is a problem with people understanding the Constitution.
We’ll agree to disagree.
January 30, 2011, 1:19 pmloki13 says:
As a further addendum, even the floor of due process rights that we now considered constitutionalized are a product of 20th century jurisprudence, and would be considered… odd… under an original expected application of the Constitution.
I know from your previous posts that you’re a big fan of the historical roots of the Constitution, so I find it odd that you’re looking for an assertion of positive rights under the due process clause that would never have been contemplated by the (majority lawyers) who wrote the document, or the people of the time who ratified it. If anything, we are given considerably more due process rights today under the Constitution than a similarly situated litigant would have dreamed of (in either civil or criminal litigation… let along in *state court*) in the late 1700s.
January 30, 2011, 1:57 pmTrying to fit a leftish analysis in a libertarianish frame « Entitled to an Opinion says:
[...] book titled The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System, which he discusses in an interview here. At the outset he discusses “public choice” or “New Institutional” [...]
January 30, 2011, 10:12 pmSammy Finkelman says:
Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (February 13, 1892 — October 9, 1954 on the court 1941-1954) did not graduate from law school. (I thought he didn’t go but he dd attend for one year) Justice Stanley F. Reed also did not have a law degree.
The price of legal advice has since skyrocketed.
January 31, 2011, 1:09 pmTed says:
Is it possible to spend an entire career calling the system corrupt but never being able to prove it to anyone who cares (which is, paradoxically, everyone).
January 31, 2011, 2:35 pmTed says:
Henry Ford did not not have a science or engineering degree. The price of automobiles has since skyrocketed.
January 31, 2011, 2:38 pm