LIBERATING FORCE
Arnold, Thurman
Liberating Force Woe Unto You, Lawyers! by Fred Rodell. Pageant Press. 184 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by Thurman Arnold WHETHER or not you agree with the basic philosophy of Woe Unto You, Lawyers!,...
...What is to be done about the fact that we are all slaves to the hocus-pocus of The Law—and to those who practice the hocus-pocus, the lawyers...
...The answer is to get rid of the lawyers and throw The Law with a capital L out of our system of laws...
...In recent years in the field of civil liberties Congressional committees and lower courts have indeed followed Fred Rodell's advice and thrown Law with a capital L out of our system...
...The king needed a new suit of clothes but he couldn't put one on until someone took the old one off...
...There is only one answer...
...It was destructive of law and order and unfortunately it was catching on and being discussed from coast to coast...
...In these times Woe Unto You, Lawyers...
...The conservative view was plaintively expressed by Barton Leech of Harvard when he said, "I wish this book had never been published...
...It had also made our legal conceptions concerning property rights, the relationship of government to the individual, and the relationship of states to the federal government equally obsolete...
...A nation full of hope and confidence, believing in the sanctity of principles of law and economics which it had inherited from the Nineteenth Century, was plunged into economic chaos and despair...
...Even when the higher law is a frustrating force, as it was when Fred Rodell wrote his book, it saves us from the personal rule of those who are in a hurry to get things done too quickly...
...All experts on subversion and men of common sense generally agreed that this was necessary to protect the security of our government...
...In the Nineteenth Century wealth consisted of things, such as factories, railroads, and goods...
...It can make factories obsolete almost as fast as they can be built...
...Reviewed by Thurman Arnold WHETHER or not you agree with the basic philosophy of Woe Unto You, Lawyers!, recently republished, one must admit that it is a most important book...
...Up and at 'em, said Fred Rodell, let's strip the black robes from the solemn judicial brethren...
...They blocked and handicapped every practical measure the government took to meet the emergency...
...It runs automatically like a machine...
...This new source of wealth had made economic theory obsolete...
...It was worse than giving whiskey to the Indians...
...The new source of wealth of Twentieth Century corporate enterprise had displaced the wealth of the Nineteenth Century...
...Read in reference to its time it is a most important and stimulating book...
...An industrial revolution had taken place, the extent and character of which was not realized by anyone...
...In terms of capacity to produce we were richer than we had ever been before in our history...
...Law with a capital L is the only way of thinking about a free society...
...In rapidly changing times Law with a capital L will always be a frustrating force because it has its roots in a past which cannot be re-created...
...Fred Rodell criticizes that decision...
...appeared...
...These legal ideals, religiously held, were a frustrating force...
...Such people are dangerous, however well-intentioned they may be...
...The great Twentieth Century industrial enterprise, a disciplined organization coordinating research and production and distribution, was like nothing the world had seen before...
...Remember that in its inception Communism was a humanitarian movement...
...He would put no limits upon a grant of power to businessmen to fix prices and restrict production in their own industries...
...It is a set of basic attitudes towards individual property and liberty which finds its expression in the ceremony of the judicial trial...
...Displace a few top personnel and it will work as effectively for a Hitler as it does for a democracy...
...Yet one should remember that it saved the Administration from disaster by declaring that the NRA was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power...
...asks Fred Rodell...
...Yet people were starving in the midst of plenty...
...And this is precisely what the book does with incisive wit...
...If Fred Rodell ever gets his wish that the ideals of higher law be eliminated because they are often confused and at times get in the way of progress— if he ever succeeds in delegating judicial decisions to men of common sense or to experts, such as the loyalty boards and Congressional investigative committees so recently curbed by the Court, the time may come when he will not be permitted by the new order to write such a book as Woe Unto You, Lawyers...
...But, ¦throw it out the window, and we can only think of society in terms of power...
...The wealth of the Twentieth Century was not tangible goods but the new art of industrial organization...
...Let's show them up for what they are so that they can no longer engage in a mysterious guerrilla war against economic reform...
...To understand why this is so we must recall the days of the depression when it first appeared and the impact of the courts, lawyers, and current legal concepts on the struggle of the government to extend its powers to meet the emergency...
...The custodians of this frustrating force were lawyers and the courts...
...It helped prepare the way for the tremendous adjustments of our basic ideals of law to our revolutionized industrial structure...
...Under the prevailing legal conceptions as we entered the depression 'the great Twentieth Century corporate enterprises were treated as if they were private individuals with whom government could not interfere without an invasion of personal liberties and property...
...He would leave such questions to men of common sense and to humanitarians...
...There is no doubt that the book was a liberating force against the retarding influence of Nineteenth Century basic legal conceptions...
...On June 17, 1957, the Supreme Court of the United States, voicing principles that were far from precise, put the capital L back into the Law of civil liberties with a series of decisions that are a landmark...
...Judges, law professors, and lawyers were shocked, startled, and amazed...
...It was purely destructive but at the time it was written a job of demolition was required...
...The Nineteenth Century legal conceptions of the proper relationship between government and the individual and between federal government and the states no longer seemed to work...
...It is to do away entirely with both the magicians and their magic and run our civilization according to practical and comprehensible rules, dedicated to non-legal justice, to common-or-garden fairness that the ordinary man can understand, in the regulation of human affairs...
...Uncontrolled, it is cannibalistic, eating up independent enterprise and destroying the purchasing power of the people it expects to buy its goods...
...That would be a tragedy, because his books are witty and provocative...
...It is only when it is read as a serious work of legal philosophy that I register my dissent...
...Fred Rodell prefers humanitarians and persons of common sense, uninhibited by the taboos of the higher law...
...It is true that the higher law as represented by the old Supreme Court seemed at times to go too far in curbing executive and legislative power during the depression...
...And the latter was Fred Rodell's contribution...
Vol. 21 • October 1957 • No. 10
