University of Nebraska College of Law - Yearbook (Lincoln, NE)

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RESPECT FOR LAW' BY ROSCOE POUND., DEAN ffm . D! ' , 3 L.-XY friend to whom I suggested the sub- ject, Respect for Law. responded. as ' ii:-321 ' ii ' lavmen will, If You want the law re- spected, make it respectable. Our pro- ' ,, if 'f n ession is usec to suci jests. aniuiani, some 2250 years changed their dec spiders' webs, in through. The aut that Alfred hung names it as one of he lived that such before Christ, legislated against judges who isions. The Greek wise man compared laws to which small nies are caught but the great break hor of the apocryphal Mirror of Justices tells us some thirty-two judges during' his reign, and the chief abuses of the degenerate times in which executions had ceased. The monks of the Mid- dle Ages had a saying, 'iB0lIfZI5 j111'1's111, 11101115 C1Z1'1.SfC'l,U and Luther went them one better with his, Hf1lI'1'Sff'll 110050 C111'Z'Sft'11f, ja c1111- b011's1c1z. ' Melancthon termed us u1UgI1l11 r011101'f01'rs, 110110111111 F.1'f01'fCS.H Shakespeare had more than one Hing at the law and its professors. The subtleties of law and the artincialities of procedure have been satyrized by Browning. Tn short, as long as there have been laws and lawyers, conscientious and well-meaning men have believed laws mere arbitrary technicalities and lawyers crafty warp- ers of them to suit their own purposes. It is evident, then, that a great deal of what is said about the law, in any age, must be taken with much allowance. The defeated litigant, the lawyer who does not observe Judge Groverls rule as to election of remedies, the man of one idea, whose idea has not yet been embodied in the law of the land, the man who is on inti- 'liuniaeaumamcs I5 Fl 51:1sN1:E, fuvu uns nv THE GRFINEEET EEIENEE5 UPDN WHICH THE HHMAN Minn ann BE EmP1..u-1E1:x, - asmntev 75

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Clara Glidden, in her gentle way 'Mong the legal volumes moving, To a friend in need a friend indeed To every toiler proving, b Has been the lawyerls faithful friend And for his good has striven. Hence our respects, so well deserved, Is freely, frankly giveng And often in the coming years, Our thought in life-work hidden, lfVe'll be students yet, nor soon forget Our gratitude to Glidden. 1 ll V ll dl if all i l EEE.'EEE!li Q l 'l 'l A ,f l 74

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mate terms with his Creator and can expound I-Iis will offhand on all occasions, the man who thinks the administration of justice the simplest of matters, which any one can carry on by the light of nature,-all these in all times swell a chorus of harmless complaint against even the best of legal systems. But we should not be de- ceived by this innocuous and inevitable outcry against all law into overlooking or underrating the real and serious lack of respect for law which exists in America. A philosopher defined law as the external conditions of life measured by reason. If the current disrespect for law meant dis- respect for reason, if it meant that the people were unwilling to measure their relations with each other by reason, but sought to leave them to cat 'ce and the chance impulse of the moment, it would be a serious phenomenon indeed. But, serious as disrespect for the law must always be, I am persuaded the present attitude of the public toward the law is not of this sort. I believe it a normal phenomenon in legal history, a necessary incident of a period of transition to enacted law. So far from rejecting reason, the people are endeavoring to reason. But they are not agreed, and as they are many and the law is one, the law can not accord with all of them. The reasons of conflicting interests in the community con- Hict with each other, and each conflicts with the reason of the past, embodied in the common law, and the reason of the whole people, as embodied in the statutes. For instance, the ultra-individualism of our common law, to which our ancestors were attached so stead- fastly, conflicts with the reason and with the interests of two of the dominant classes of modern society. In its insistence on freedom of contract, on individual freedom to work as, and as long as, one chooses, and on individual responsibility forthe risk of employ- ment, it confiicts with the reason and with the interest of laborers. In its insistence on competition at all events and at whatever cost, its hostility to combination and organization, its insistence that a partnership is not an entity, and its narrow views of the powers of corporations, it conflicts with the reason and the interest of men of business. Thus the two chief forces in the community, labor and business, are out of accord with the law, and this at a time when each is pushing forward and extending its influence. Individual grievances against the law are as old as the law. They have no necessary effect. On the other hand, friction be- tween the law and important groups or classes in the community affects the whole administration of justice. In legal history, it has ' 76