QUOTATIONS ABOUT LAWYERS AND BAD LAWS
"Seventy-five percent of all American lawyers are incompetent, dishonest or both." - former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Trial Lawyer's Guide, 1971
(Lawyering) “is a sick profession marked by incompetence, lack of training, misconduct and bad manners. Ineptness, bungling, malpractice, and bad ethics can be observed in court houses all over this country every day. These incompetents have a seeming unawareness of the fundamental ethics of the profession”. -Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Warren Burger
“4% of lawyers are competent”-- A survey of judges by U.S. News and World Report, 1981 New Jersey, in 1993, an Eagleton Institute poll concluded that only 32 percent of the public had a positive view of court performance. In 1998, the National Center for State Courts headlined two 1994 surveys in its annual report: First, by the American Judicature Society, 80% of the court community reported a lack of public trust and confidence in their respective jurisdictions; Second, a Gallup poll showed that only 15% of the public had a great deal of trust in the ability of the justice system to meet society's needs.
"The law is the weapon, the courtroom the battlefield, the judge your enemy and your lawyer is an enemy spy." -- Michael H. Brown
“Everyone ought to take every opportunity to blast lawyers.” -- Marlin Fitzwater, Pres. Bush’s press sec
“The mere title of lawyer is sufficient to deprive a man of the public confidence…… The most innocent and irreproachable life cannot guard a lawyer against the hatred of his fellow citizens.” -- John Quincy Adams, 1787
“My whole family follows the medical profession closely,” said the young man. “They’re lawyers.” “A man who never graduated from school might steal from a freight car. But a man who attends college and graduates as a lawyer might steal the whole railroad.” -- President Theodore Roosevelt attempting to persuade his son to become a lawyer
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” -- Shakespeare (King Henry the Sixth, Part 2)
“If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mahjongg factory, we’d be freer and safer, and out taxes would be reduced by almost half.” -- H. L. Mencken
“The lawyer has learned how to flatter his master in word and indulge him in deed; but his soul is small and unrighteous…… from the first he has practiced deception and retaliation, and has become stunted and warped. And so he has passed out of youth into manhood, having no soundness in him ….” -- Plato (321 B. C.)
“They have no lawyers among them for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.” -- Sir Thomas Moore, 1516 (and patron saint of lawyers?)
“A well-known occupational hazard of lawyers is their tendency to become contentious, and to develop such associated traits as being arrogant, deceitful, and punitive.” -- David Riley, attorney and writer “It isn’t the bad lawyers who are screwing up the justice system in this country – it’s the good lawyers. If you have two competent lawyers on opposite sides, a trial that should take three days could easily take six months.” -- Art Buchwald, humorist
“The trouble with law is lawyers” -- Clarence Darrow, famous lawyer
“Lawyers as a group are no more dedicated to justice or public service than a private utility is dedicated to giving light.” -- David Melinkoff, professor, UCLA SPANISH PROVERBS:
“Win your lawsuit, lose your money.” “A peasant between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.”
“The trial lawyer does what Socrates was executed for: making the worse argument appear the stronger.” -- Judge Irving Kaufman
“I told you – you should’ve got yourself some legal advice before running to a lawyer.” (overheard in a courthouse corridor) -- The New Yorker
“Deals aren’t usually blown by principals; they’re blown by lawyers and accountants trying to prove how valuable they are.” -- Robert Townsend
“It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again, and therefore the take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions…” -- Jonathan Swift
“It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour.” -- Thomas Jefferson
“They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are getting’ ready to prove that a man’s heirs ain’t got any right to his property.” -- Mark Twain
“God works wonders now and then; Behold! a Lawyer, an honest Man.” -- Benjamin Franklin, 1733
The priest’s friend loses his faith, the doctor’s his health, the lawyer’s his fortune. -- Venetian Proverb
“What’s the use of that, Wendell, a lawyer can’t be a great man!” -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., on his son’s plans to attend law school
“One thing I supplicate, your majesty: that you will give orders, under a great penalty, that no bachelors of law should be allowed to come here [to the New World]; for not only are they bad themselves, but they also make and contrive a thousand iniquities.” -- Vasco Nunez de Balboa, to King Ferdinand V of Spain, 1513
“More lawyers live on politics than flies on a dead camel”
-- Tammany Hall saying
“Bless those men in black robes. They’re in the same union with us.” -- Melvin Belli, on judges
“While law is supposed to be a device to serve society, a civilized way of helping the wheels go round without too much friction, it is pretty hard to find a group less concerned with serving society and more concerned with serving themselves than the lawyers.” -- Fred Rodell, Yale University Law School
The United States is home to two-thirds of the world’s lawyers. There are as many lawyers in Washington, D.C. as are in all of Japan.
QUOTATIONS ABOUT THE LAW ITSELF Where you find the laws most numerous, there you will find also the greatest injustice. Arcesilaus
The strictest law often causes the most serious wrong. Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)
The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced. Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993)
What power has law where only money rules. Gaius Petronius (~66 AD)
The more laws and order are made prominent, The more thieves and robbers there will be. Lao-tzu (604 BC - 531 BC), The Way of Lao-tzu
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)
Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made. Otto von Bismarck (1815 - 1898)
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
Earl Warren (1891 - 1974)
QUOTES "The friends and adversaries of the plan of the [Constitutional] convention, if they agree on nothing else, concur at least in the value they set upon the trial by jury; or if there is any difference between them it consists of this: the former regard it as a valuable safeguard to liberty, the latter represent it as the very palladium of free government."
Alexander Hamilton Joint-author of the Federalist Papers
"If it [jury power] is not law, it is better than law, it ought to be law, and will always be law wherever justice prevails."
Ben Franklin Delegate to the Constitutional Convention
"Must a citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? ‌ It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right."
Henry David Thoreau Author, Civil Disobedience
"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular--but one must take it because it is right. One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws--and unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law."
Martin Luther King, Jr. A quotation from Tolstoy comes to mind: I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth, if it be such as would obliged them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in
explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
FROM THE "ANTI-LAWYER PARTY" There are two classes of citizens in the United States; the aristocracy and the peasantry. Most people think of the aristocrats as the rich, and the peasants as the poor. This could not be further from the truth. People of other countries understand our system of government better than we do. As early as 1839, Alexis DeTocqueville, in his book Democracy in America, recognized that the aristocracy of the United States is found "..in the judges' bench and the lawyers bar." In 1839, a law degree was not required to become a judge. John Marshal, now considered as the "Great Chief Justice," was trained by attending a series of law lectures for six weeks. Many of his opinions are still considered "law" today. In 1878, The American Bar Association was formed in Saratoga Springs, New York, and it has been downhill ever since. The idea that only lawyers are qualified to represent other people in court is not only ridiculous, but unconstitutional (Amendment VI. See: Faretta v. California, 95 S.Ct. 2525 1975) and dangerous. How would you describe a nation that only allowed police to own weapons? You would call it a Police State. How then would you describe a nation that only allowed lawyers to practice or determine the law? You would call it an Oligarchy. Which is precisely the government we have in America today. "The people are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts - not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it". Abraham Lincoln And pervert it they have. Our government is controlled by lawyers. Judicial activism is overshadowed by something far more insidious: The total domination of the process of government and the construction of social policy by one profession - LAWYERS. THIS IS THE ANTITHESIS OF THE SEPARATION OF POWERS CONCEPT. THE SUPREME LAW "In the United States the Constitution governs the legislator as much as the private citizen: as it is the first of laws, it cannot be modified by a law; and it is therefore just that the tribunals should obey the Constitution in preference to any law." Alexis DeTocquville
Since the Constitution of the United States of America is the Supreme Law of the Land and superior to any ordinary act of the legislature, including Congress, any law repugnant to the Constitution is null and void - Marbury v. Madison, 5 (Cranch) U.S. 137, 174, 176. Constitutional rights must be interpreted in favor of the citizen - Byars v. U.S., 273 U.S. 28. Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule-making or legislation which would abrogate them - Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 468. An unconstitutional act is not law. It confers no rights, imposes no duties, affords no protections, creates no office. It is, in legal interpretation, as inoperative as if it had never been passed Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425. The Constitution is a written instrument, and as such, its meaning does not alter - South Carolina v. United States, 26 S.Ct. 110, 1905. Congress, cannot, merely by legislating, amend the Constitution. Meyer v. United States, 47 S.Ct. 21 (1926) If the above cases represent the principles of the "Supreme Law," why then do we suffer blatant Constitutional abuses in today's courtrooms? Read on: 1. "Seventy-five percent of all American lawyers are incompetent, dishonest or both." former U.S. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Trial Lawyer's Guide, 1971 2. 4% of lawyers are competent. A survey of judges by U.S. News and World Report, 1981 3. New Jersey, in 1993, an Eagleton Institute poll concluded that only 32 percent of the public had a positive view of court performance. In 1998, the National Center for State Courts headlined two 1994 surveys in its annual report: First, by the American Judicature Society, 80% of the court community reported a lack of public trust and confidence in their respective jurisdictions; Second, a Gallup poll showed that only 15% of the public had a great deal of trust in the ability of the justice system to meet society's needs. 4. is a sick profession marked by incompetence, lack of training, misconduct and bad manners. Ineptness, bungling, malpractice, and bad ethics can be observed in court houses all over this country every day. These incompetents have a seeming unawareness of the fundamental ethics of the profession. -Chief Justice United States Warren Burger Now consider that those same "incompetent, inept, bungling" bloodsuckers are the gene pool for tomorrow's judges and that better than 60% of our Federal and state legislatures are composed of members of this "honored" profession. Need any more convincing that our legal system is infested with parasites? OBJECTIVES OF THE ANTI-LAWYER PARTY The Anti-Lawyer Party is not, necessarily, "anti-lawyer." As a profession, they can exist in a free society as does any other business. We believe that the free market system and the proliferation of Pro Se litigation and non-lawyer arbitration will keep them in check. However, their domination and monopolization of the entire legal system must come to an end. No where else in our society has any one entity been allowed such control over an industry and only "We the People" have the power to stop it.