The Better Chancery Practice Blog

As is always the case the morning after an election, I awake to discover that I won some and lost some. I”m sure your experience is pretty much the same.

Overall, though, I’m pleased that we once again came together in this ancient civic ritual of our republic and peaceably renewed our government through the ballot, resolving our differences via democracy.

Cynics will argue that I am wrong, that special interests, plutocrats and autocrats actually govern, and that electoral democracy is a chimera designed to placate the masses. As with all overstatements, there is a kernel of unfortunate truth in that, but even the most hardshell cynic can not deny that we did get to vote, and our votes counted.

Some years ago when I campaigned for the judgeship I now hold, I was astonished at the number of people who told me that they would be happy to vote for me if they were registered to vote, but they weren’t registered because they did not want to bother with jury duty.

Think about it. They are shirking the two core privileges/responsibilities of a citizen in a democracy: the right to vote, and the right to a jury of one’s peers. This is mind-boggling to me. Some of these are the very same people who wave the flag, act like patriots, and criticize politics and politicians with whom they disagree. These are some of the same people who welcome back our troops from conflicts afar and forward partisan emails about supporting our troops.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think of those people as fellow citizens. They are, I hope, fellow taxpayers, and they are fellow occupants of space on this continent, but citizens? No. They are not supporters of our military. They are parasites sponging off of the blood and sacrifice of all who truly valued our freedom and sacrificed their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to preserve it.

Lawyers have traditionally had a special role to play as guardians of our democratic ways. They have been looked to as leaders, policy makers, defenders of those whose rights are threatened, and active in the political arena. That role has been blunted, in my opinion, over the past 25 or so years by one party that has vilified lawyers and cynically attacked their legitimate role in society, as well as by lawyers themselves, who have increasingly become shopkeepers interested more in a safe profile and the bottom line. That’s a pity — if my opinion is accurate. If you disagree, feel free to comment.

So to those of you who exercised the grandest privilege of your liberty yesterday and voted, I tip my hat to you and embrace you as my fellow citizen. We may not have voted the same way, but we made our voices — however small — heard.

And to those of you lawyers who are hunkered down with your bottom line, I urge you to do yourselves and your embattled profession a favor by sticking your head up out of the trenches, look about you at the surrounding landscape, roll up your sleeves, and lead. Critics be damned.

Tagged: democracy, Election, lawyers, voting