Dean's Address

RESPECT IS THE ANSWER, ISN'T IT?

 by Peter C. John

For all of you past Deans you never warned me how often your mind returns to the upcoming Dean's address for the full year since the appointment as Dean. You also failed to warn me of the size of the file you create during the year with potential wisdom to impart to your peers. Every time you read something, the question becomes 'Will this add to the Dean's address?"

For you future Deans, it is, nonetheless, a rewarding experience since it compels you to focus on what is important to you, and what you believe is important to our profession.

As a result, I believe it is important to continue the subjects discussed in those excellent Dean's addresses by Bob Josefsberg on civility, Ron Krist on the public and political assault on the jury system, and Bob Parks' address on the duties compelled by our professional oaths but with a different theme. Hence my title ‑ "Respect Is the Answer, Isn't It?" Maybe it should be "Respect and Trust are the Answers, Aren't They?"

So you will understand my convictions and my mind set, let me read to you a quote from an unusual source‑a letter written by Robert E. Lee, to his son when he left for college:

You must be frank with the world. Frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do on every occasion and take it for granted you mean to do right ... Never do anything wrong to make a friend or keep one; the man who requires you to do so is clearly purchased at a sacrifice. Above all, do not appear to others what you are not.

With that frankness in mind, let me just say it. We are a major contributor to the decline in respect and trust of trial lawyers by the well publicized actions of some, but mainly by the inaction of our best, brightest and most successful. Some of our brethren have begun efforts to right the ship as I will discuss later, but we need many more to contribute. It seems to me we have an obligation to leave the system better than we found it, and we are not doing so.

Critical to continued success and improvement of the jury system is maintaining the presses, the public's and the litigant's respect for the system. Increase in disapproval ratings for lawyers does more than hurt our feelings and makes us the butt of jokes: far worse, it breeds disrespect of and contempt for our system of justice. I am not naive enough to think our profession will ever gain the respect we would like it to have, but a 70% ‑ 80% disapproval rate and declining, scars not only us, but most importantly, the system. The "System's" requirement that lawyers be partisan and vigorous advocates makes us easy targets for approbation. Partisan lawyers are necessary to protect against government overreaching and corruption, oppression of the economically weak by the economically strong, and importantly, to allow companies and individuals to pursue or defend against claims for compensation for damages caused by others in a fair forum. Because we are the most partisan profession in our country, there is no way to totally overcome criticism, justified or not. Part of the problem is the publics', and many commentators', lack of awareness of how totally partisan our system of justice requires us to be, and thus the criticism for what they believe is a lack of balance in our words and deeds.

The English lawyer, philosopher H. L. A. Hart wrote:

The general principle latent in these diverse applications of the idea of justice is that individuals are entitled in respect of each other to a certain relative position of equality or inequality. This is something to be respected in the vicissitudes of social life when burdens or benefits fail to be distributed; it is also something to be restored when it is disturbed. Hence justice is traditionally thought of as maintaining or restoring a balance or proportion ..."

The public expects this balance of justice but views our role as counterproductive to that goal in many cases. They don't really understand that we attain that balance by being the most partisan profession on the planet.

We are educated to be partisan
We are trained to be partisan
We think in partisan terms
We speak in partisan terms
We act in partisan terms

Our system works because we have partisan advocates providing fuel for each side of a controversy, but we still have not properly educated the public to the necessity for that type of advocacy.

Unfortunately, an additional problem is that this type of necessary partisan advocacy, previously done with dignity, respect, and hopefully trust within our Code of Ethical Conduct, has changed to personal attacks on each other, our clients, the judges and the court system itself. Little wonder when we don't respect each other, others don't respect us. Little wonder people question the fairness of the System itself when we challenge its fairness.

Let me be more specific. We all know too many lawyers who, as a matter of course, always view their counterpart in litigation as devious, dishonest, obnoxious and even unethical. A judge in Cook County categorized them into (1) the bloodfeud lawyers and (2) the paranoid lawyers. We all know lawyers who are in one or both of those categories. They disbelieve every opponent, whether there is any basis for it or not. Worse yet, they tell their clients their view and it spreads geometrically. Again, little wonder people lose respect for us generally. Maybe some lawyers view their opponents that way to get their juices flowing, but I say find another way. This has to stop before we destroy the system.

The public will never totally appreciate our role as trial lawyers because, as we know, there is almost always a dissatisfied party at the end of litigation. Many times both are dissatisfied, and worse, they usually have had to pay us something for reaching the dissatisfied result. Even given those problems there are things we can do in my judgment to stem the decline in respect for us and the system. First, we better start becoming more bipartisan on the issues which fundamentally affect our system, and educate the public and the press, or we will continue the respect slide.

Let me read to you ‑what The Chicago Tribune wrote on February 13, 1999 on the front page about the participants in the Clinton impeachment, almost all lawyers:

A profile in courage, it was not. No Republican stood tall to say that the case against President Clinton was not the stuff of impeachment when it would have mattered, before the outcome was so clear. None criticized the Republican prosecutors or Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. No Democrat took the bold step of saying that Clinton should be removed, the polls be damned. No member of Clinton's cabinet resigned in protest. "Impartial justice," apparently, wears a partisan robe. The only politicians who came through the historic trial with their reputations enhanced were the ones who wrote the Constitution more than 210 years ago.

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