Wasn't there a time when the state's motto was Regnat Populus, or The People Rule? If so, it's now in the process of being replaced by The Lawyers Rule--only it's not being put so frankly. Plain English would not sufficiently disguise its meaning. Instead it is being called Merit Selection, a Fair and Impartial Judiciary, or anything but what it is: a power grab by the state's legal establishment. There's no telling how long the bar is going to go on playing these word-games. Probably forever, if not longer. Lawyers are experts at avoiding self-incrimination. It's nothing personal, for as professional advocates it's their bound duty to defend their clients whatever they themselves may believe or disbelieve.
Nor do our legal eagles mind distorting a little history or a lot of it to get their way. For example, they contend that the "last three Supreme Court campaigns in Arkansas demonstrate how local campaigns can be overwhelmed by the dark-money effort . . . ." It's only when the dark money is their own, having been sufficiently laundered, that it becomes kosher. Or as one of the pigs in Animal Farm might put it, our dark money good, your dark money bad. Simple, concise and to the point. And if you've got any questions, keep them to yourself. Or you might get yourself sued. Even for reciting a roll-call vote that's part of the official record.
Selecting judges has been a source of contention in this Republic since it was a republic. And fights over the selection of judges have been going on since there were judges to be selected. It's a tradition as old as Marbury v. Madison, yet these legal eagles would have the rest of us believe that such decisions are brought by constitutional storks. Who knew?
The upshot: Now the state's voters are to be asked to vote in favor of their not voting for judges of the state's Supreme Court, and if you can follow all that, you may have just passed the bar. Cut the common people and common sense out of the proceedings, and what remains is nothing but legalese as far as the eye can see.
The Good Lord must indeed have loved lawyers, for He made so many of them. Except they've become a plague upon the land, and there's no getting away from them, whether you're trying to start your own business, improve your own land, or even trying to improve yourself. But everywhere you look, there's a lawyer in the way.
In the meantime, our lawyerly types have been tying themselves into more knots than can be found in a sailors' manual in order to justify their self-interested position. Result: Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as Mr. Lincoln put it, is to be replaced by government of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers.
Why not follow Henry David Thoreau's dictum instead? Simplify, simplify, simplify. Instead of complicate, complicate, complicate. But it's complications that these pettifoggers specialize in. Until what began as a fault has now become a habit.
Would it be too much to ask that our legal establishment follow the first rule of good language instead? Which is: Call things by their right names. Why not just call a power grab a power grab, and a self-serving recommendation just what it is, too? Because, of course, that would be . . . unlawyerly.
In this country, we were once supposed to believe in the rule of law. Why substitute the rule of lawyers for it now? For where the rule of law ends, there anarchy begins--even if it's called something else. Wasn't it Thomas Jefferson who warned us against letting any class get between us and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence he called our God-given rights sacred and undeniable, but of course his draft was rewritten by a committee of . . . lawyers.
Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 06/12/2016