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The noble purpose of this slender book is not stated. It records
stories about the professional achievements of nine diverse American
lawyers and judges. The nine subjects were selected by the editor,
whose day job is director of the American Bar Association Museum
of Law.1 As with many museum presentations, one leaves the
exhibit a little better informed and maybe a little inspired. Those
who are skeptical about the moral values of lawyers may get some
relief. Or those who seek the inspiration to pursue a noble purpose
as a lawyer may close the book with a sense of modest elevation.
The book is not presented as serious
scholarship in law or in history. The stories are not documented,
although there are a few references supplied at the end of each
story for those who might want to pursue a matter more fully.
Three of the nine stories are written by authors who are not professional
scholars.
Unsurprisingly, the stories celebrate
the careers of the nine subjects. All the subjects are politically
correct heroes (one is a heroine) in the sense that each advanced
laws that most twenty-first-century readers will respect. And
the authors are correctly diverse with respect to race, gender,
and ethnicity.
Five of the subjects are admired
as advocates for causes: James Alexander as an early champion
of free speech; Clara Shortridge Foltz as an advocate of equal
rights for women and as a champion of the right to counsel of
those accused of serious crime; Octavio Larrazolo, an early governor
of New Mexico, as an advocate for the equal rights of nuevamexicanos;
Louis Marshall as an advocate for the equal rights of Jewish citizens
and other minorities; Attorney General Francis Biddle as an advocate
for the rights of Americans of Japanese ancestry, and of those
tried as German saboteurs. Noah Parden, an African-American, is
presented as one who risked his life as well as his career to
save the life of a convict who was lynched as a consequence of
Parden's success in securing a stay of execution.
Three of the subjects were judges.
One, Samuel Sewall sat in 1692 as a member of the nine-judge court
ordering the execution of nineteen Salem witches. In 1696, he
boldly proclaimed that at least some were not guilty and called
for a day of fasting, prayer, and apology. As a descendant of
one of those executed, I accept his apology. He did, if belatedly,
perform a humane service in redirecting the attention of Puritans
away from their obsession with the devil. Hugh Lennox Bond as
a federal judge from Maryland sitting in South Carolina during
the time of Reconstruction risked odium and personal safety to
administer the Klu Klux Klan Act and protect the rights of former
slaves.
Justice Lemuel Shaw may be the
best remembered of the subjects, and the one least likely to be
warmly approved by today's reader. As the dominant member of Massachusetts'
highest court, he made a lot of law, and his decisions were often
followed in other states. Alone among the nine subjects, there
is no moment of impressive moral or physical courage in his career
that readers could be asked to celebrate. And one may certainly
question some of the law he made. Indeed, his career might be
taken as an example of problems arising when life-tenured officials
presume to make law having no firm roots in a pre-existing legal
text, such as the fellow-servant rule. Many of his contemporaries
stoutly insisted that officials so empowered should be chosen
by the people and accountable to them. Some of us may still think
that some democratic constraints on guys like Shaw are needful.
To whom should this book be referred?
Not scholars surely. But perhaps to law students or others considering
the possibilities for careers in law. For that purpose, it may
be commended.
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