THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 21, 1994 TAG: 9412210028
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: BY ROSS C. REEVES, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
MARY ANN GLENDON'S ``A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession is Transforming American Society'' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24) chronicles the acute crisis of values that has developed within the legal system over the past three decades. By demonstrating that trouble in these waters threatens America's democratic institutions and social fabric, Glendon joins a growing cadre of people who believe that seemingly distant intellectual trends are in fact critically important to society at large.
A lawyer in private practice before joining the Harvard Law School faculty, Glendon first provides a vivid portrayal of why lawyers today are unhappy and demoralized to an unprecedented degree. Social and economic forces largely beyond their control, she finds, have shattered the ``culture'' that long safeguarded lawyers' independence, prestige, collegiality and ethical values.
In the meantime, the judiciary has undergone a similar redefinition of values. Glendon asserts that courts have abandoned ``classical'' virtues of self-restraint and logic and have instead adopted the ``romantic'' and undemocratic view that a judge's subjective views take precedence over legislative choices, individual responsibility and established law.
Not surprisingly, Glendon has much to say about law schools as well. Since 1970, she observes, they have been increasingly populated by students who have little regard for the law, much less its traditions. Faculties have accommodated them by lightening up on rigorous legal analysis and emphasizing instead socio-political doctrines. The result, Glendon suggests, is the gradual poisoning of America's legal culture with the moral relativism and statism characteristic of European and South American systems.
Glendon attributes much of the crisis within the profession to society itself, with its growing preference for blood sport in the courts over dispute resolution through custom, shared values and accepted law. Americans today are quick to act out their prejudices and sensitivities in courtroom battles, she observes, and clients increasingly prefer lawyers who get good results over those who offer good advice. Little room remains for the moral influence traditionally exerted by lawyers.
A book that merely depicts dispirited lawyers, wild-eyed judges and politically correct teachers is more likely to generate an unsympathetic yawn than a thoughtful response. Glendon wisely goes beyond these observations. The American legal system, she reminds us, has historically been the means by which society generates accepted values. Just as important, the system constantly adapts and rearticulates these values to meet the evolving needs of a dynamic society, acting both as a gentle brake on majoritarian impulses and as an engine of change.
America's legal system has served the nation well in the past, Glendon concludes, because society itself, not just lawyers and judges, has understood and embraced this dynamic process. The contemporary trends Glendon describes thus have significance beyond the profession. They are signs that the system is disintegrating from within, threatening the nation's ability to generate values and expand freedoms.
``A Nation Under Lawyers'' is part of a wider ``counter-reformation'' against three decades of relativism and nihilism among the intelligentsia in all fields. In recent years scholars of all political stripes - from Russell Kirk to Camille Paglia, Robert Hughes, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Harold Bloom - have decried the perceived erosion of America's institutions, values and standards. All share a conviction that the sirens of openmindedness and diversity have lured us away from the very virtues and systems that have made the nation so congenial to change and so accommodative to a heterogeneous population.
Each of these scholars faces the challenge of distinguishing his or her voice from those who use terms such as ``tradition'' and ``values'' as code words for intolerance and nativism. ``A Nation Under Lawyers'' meets this challenge admirably, reminding us that the health of our legal traditions is the measure of our personal liberties and political freedoms. MEMO: Ross C. Reeves is a corporate attorney in Norfolk.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Mary Ann Glendon chronicles the lack of values in the legal
profession in her new book.
by CNB