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Fred Rodell, born 1907, was Yale law professor who — oddly enough — made a career out of criticizing the legal profession. Thus his 1939 book, Woe Unto You, Lawyers! (Full text free here.) The book is a sweeping criticism of role of the lawyers and judges in modern life. The chief complaint is that these legal experts have too much power, and that this power is based on smoke and mirrors.
Lawyers, he argues, run modern civilization. Most presidents and governors, along with their advisors, have been lawyers. Indeed, people with law degrees stock all three branches of government: There is no separation as powers where lawyers are concerned. And beyond their role in governing, lawyers have rendered normal people dependent. We cannot buy a home, sell a home, start a business, get married, get divorced, or leave property to our children without consulting lawyers.
But the expertise of the lawyer is deceptive – to use Rodell’s words, “the law is a high-class racket.” Like tribal medicine men and medieval priests, the power of lawyers is based on guarding access to secret knowledge. The layman stays in the dark about how law works because the law is carried out in a foreign language—thus the law of the US is filled with Latin, French, and Old English words. Even when a word appears to be modern English – like “consideration” – it turns out to have a weird and obscure meaning when used by lawyers. And lawyers are usually unable or unwilling to translate any of this confusing mess into the vernacular.
Whatever language you describe them in, the legal concepts are themselves often vague to the point of being meaningless. They are, in effect, wiggle words that provide ample room for interpretation.
For example, consider a statute that reads “Anyone who spits on this platform will be fined 10 dollars.” That is clear enough. But real laws rarely sound like this. A more realistic example would be: “Anyone who willfully and maliciously spits on this platform will be fined 10 dollars.” But what exactly makes something willful or malicious? Here lies the trick. Even if there’s a video recording of you doing the spitting, a sympathetic court always has the room to decide you didn’t really do it maliciously, and so spare you the fine. The law is full of such wiggle words, and much legal argument and decision-making is merely playing a game with them.