Good morning,
I am not an honoree, a distinguished Lincoln
scholar, an Appellate Court judge nor a Supreme
Court Justice of either Rhode Island or
Connecticut. I am a practicing attorney and I
will speak from that vantage point.
Law Day was established May 1, 1958 by Dwight D.
Eisenhower as
“A day of national dedication to
the principles of government under law.”
In the following year’s official proclamation
for Law Day, President Eisenhower stated:
“Free people can assure the blessings of liberty
for themselves only if they recognize the
necessity that the rule of law shall be supreme
and that all men shall be equal before the law.”
Each year when we observe Law Day we
celebrate this principle and the contributions
of the women and men who work on behalf of our
system of law and justice.
This year’s theme for Law Day – A
Legacy of Liberty – Celebrating Lincoln’s
Bicentennial – is intended to focus on our
iconic lawyer-president Lincoln and his lifetime
commitment to constitutional democracy and the
preservation of liberty.
Many American presidents have been
lawyers. President Barack Obama is the 44th
president and the 26th
lawyer-president – 60% of our presidents have
been lawyers. Lincoln practiced law with
renowned integrity for almost 25 years before
becoming President. He tried more than 5,000
cases and argued many times before the Illinois
Supreme Court and once before the U.S. Supreme
Court. Less than 2 years after being admitted
to the practice of law, speaking to the Young
Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois he spoke
about the preeminence of the rule of law,
saying:
“Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by
every American mother, to the lisping babe, that
prattles on her lap – let it be taught in
schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it
be written in Primers, spelling books, and in
Almanacs; - let it be preached from the pulpit,
proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in
courts of justice. And, in short, let it become
the political religion of the nation; and let
the old and the young, the rich and the poor,
the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues,
and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly
upon its altars…”
On President’s Day, this year, only four days
after the bicentennial anniversary of Abraham
Lincoln’s birth, I was honored to listen to an
address by the Chief Justice of the
Massachusetts Supreme Court and President of the
Conference of Chief Justices, the Hon. Margaret
H. Marshall, which she delivered at the ABA
House of Delegates meeting. Her insights,
particularly as a South African native were
striking. She spoke of the South Africa of her
childhood, in which the judiciary was the
“handmaiden of Parliament” and when judges could
not “strike down the most unjust laws”. She
warned that in order for state courts to do
justice, they must be “independent of outside
influence, free from interference from elected
branches” and funded adequately.Late in that same afternoon, when Steven N.
Zack, the ABA President-Elect nominee also spoke
of the sanctity of the rule of law as the
bedrock for the preservation of civil liberties,
he too, identified a fair and impartial
judiciary as the crucial requirement. Attorney
Zack stirringly related memories about fleeing
Cuba with his grandfather to the United States. His grandfather had made a life in Cuba
following his emigration from a totalitarian
Russia regime in 1909. When his and his family’s
liberty was once again challenged, he left
behind his adopted home, where he had made a
life for more than 50 years, to become a
refugee, once more. While his grandfather
admitted to his grandson that he was “very sad”,
he told him also that he was hopeful on that day
in 1960. He said he “knew he would never be a
refugee again because if America fell, there
would be no place to go”.
Attorney Zack said that the “first moment” that
they knew that their “rights were at stake” was
with the “attacks on the judiciary”. He told us
that the Cuban constitution was identical to
that of the United States of America at that
time but that the “constitutions are words and
only words” where the rule of law is not
honored.Justice Marshall and Attorney Zack, who both
personally experienced societies in which the
rule of law did not reign, reminded the 500+
delegates before them that the rule of law is
what sustains a free nation. And that what
sustains the rule of law is a fair and impartial
judiciary. In our current faltering economy, the rule of
law is being severely challenged. Inadequate
funding of our Judiciary is an attack on our
system of justice. Inadequate funding of the
Judicial Branch, including the legal aid system,
funded in part through the budget of the Branch,
will result in the delay of justice, limitation
of access to justice, and potentially the
failure of an independent co-equal Judicial
Branch in this State. The preservation of
individual liberties is dependent upon access to
a viable judicial system.Too, the crisis of civic education contributes
to the erosion of the rule of law. That crisis
is well documented. In a 2007 survey conducted
by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, it was
reported that:
Seventy-four percent of Americans said that they
knew at least one of the three branches of
government. When asked to name them, only 36%
correctly named all three. Fifteen percent of
Americans knew that John Roberts is the Chief
Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, while 66%
could name a judge on American Idol. Eighty-seven percent of Americans believe, to a
great or moderate extent, that it is the state
legislators’ responsibility to interpret state
laws and constitutions.
As a result of this failure of knowledge, many
American citizens do not understand that the
separation of powers is fundamental to the
survival of the rule of law.
In order for the rule of law to survive in
society, even a democratic society, we
must recognize and protect its centrality and
preserve its strength. And, for the rule of law
to survive in society, especially in a
democratic society, it must be preserved when
challenges to it are the greatest. On Law
Day we must contemplate and appreciate the
importance of the rule of law in all of our
lives and how poor the quality of life is
without it.So what we can do to preserve the rule of law?
We must advocate for proper funding of the
judiciary and of equal access to justice for the
poor. We must defend the judiciary from
systemic attacks on its proper functions- the
same state courts, which retired Associate
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has
identified as the “backbone of our system of
justice”.We must resist and advocate against the
politicization of the judicial process, speaking
out to defend judges and the court system from
unfair assaults, whether by individuals, the
press or other sources, political or private
interest in nature, that undermine the
independence of the judicial system. As citizens we must obey laws. Attorneys must
counsel clients to obey court orders, including
voluntary agreements entered as court orders. We must respect and defend the freedoms of our
neighbors, even when we don’t agree with them.
As Clarence Darrow once said:
“You can only
protect your liberties in the world by
protecting the other man’s freedom. You can
only be free if I am free.”
We
must educate and advocate the education of our
children, our neighbors, our legislators, our
citizens, and our leaders as to what our system
of the rule of law is and why it is important to
the very essence of our lives and liberty in
this State and in our United States of America.
Abraham Lincoln’s words at a time of the
greatest of crisis in our nation, are relevant
today too: He said: America will never be
destroyed from the outside. If we falter and
lose our freedoms, it will be because we
destroyed ourselves.Having recently celebrated the 200th
anniversary of the birth of that great lawyer -
some say the greatest American lawyer – and
celebrating him and the rights guaranteed to us
under the Declaration of Independence that he
held so dear, on this Law Day we must each –
regardless of age or avocation - embrace our
responsibility to preserve the rule of law on
which our very liberty depends.
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