Law Day History
How Law Day Began: Charles Rhyne's Law Day 2000 Speech
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“The Original Creation and Future Impact of Law Day: Law Empowering People to
Be Free from 1958 to the New Millennium”
Address by Charles S. Rhyne, Former President of the American Bar
Association,
and Originator of the Idea of Law Day USA
Law Library of Congress Law Day Celebration
Monday, May 1, 2000 at the Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C.
It is an honor to speak to you in the Library building dedicated to Thomas Jefferson, who provided his personal library to the Congress after the destruction of the War of 1812. I think Jefferson—with his belief in freedom of thought and individual liberty, as well as his recognition of the importance of a public declaration of these rights—would have approved of the Law Day we celebrate.
I thought you might be interested in the way Law Day came about, and the way it has changed with the times. Mine will not be a scholarly presentation, but I hope it will offer some insight, and some amusement, about how public pronouncements often come into being.
The justifications for a Law Day were two-fold, one timeless and one very much a product of its times.
The timeless notion was the use of law to achieve individual and social justice. The application of that notion to the Cold War, to contrast democracy with Communism, was a product of its times, but one which, I think, is relevant to the new democracies which have replaced the Communist regimes. You have been provided a copy of the radio address I gave on that first Law Day in 1958 over the Voice of America. This shows the original purpose and rationale of a Law Day.
Both of these ideas which eventually became embodied in Law Day arose from my experience in the American Bar Association.
I began my litigation career representing states and cities in cases which were headed for, or were in, the Supreme Court of the United States. Through the years, I did work for, and became close to, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York, and the city attorneys of the large cities throughout the country; I became the general counsel of the city attorneys' national organization.
The city attorneys advised me to become active in the American Bar Association, mostly to raise the profile of their organization by raising my own. I did so. But, the ABA's municipal law section consisted not of city attorneys, but of municipal bond lawyers, and I had little interest in their schemes to guarantee that cities would always be forced to pay them to give opinions on the legality of bond issues. The international law section seemed much more interesting and important, and I became active in that
By that time, I had met ABA President-elect Arthur Vanderbilt of New Jersey and I became active in his comprehensive program to reform domestic court structures at all levels. James Economos, another young lawyer, and I ran Chief Justice Vanderbilt’s traffic court reform program.
At that time traffic fines were assessed and collected by local justices of the peace, who were entitled to keep a portion of every fine they collected. These traffic "courts," which were often held by men with no legal training, in a local barber shop or a rocking chair on someone's front porch, provided the only encounter most American citizens had with the legal system. The whole system was a disgrace and it was understandable that the defendants (about a million people in 1937 alone) would lose faith in the entire legal system.
Jim Economos and I worked with bar associations, civic clubs and municipalities to improve traffic laws, to implement numbered "non-fixable" traffic tickets, and to have violations heard in real courtrooms by law-trained judges.
The improvement and modernization of courts continues to be a theme of Law Day celebrations.
Meanwhile, by watching Mayor LaGuardia, who also was a lawyer, I saw how appeals could be made directly to people to change the law.
I began to travel around the country, speaking to groups of lawyers on the power of the law to achieve individual and social justice. Often the attorneys would push me before groups of non-lawyers, such as local Rotary and Kiwanis clubs. These people were as interested in law reform as the lawyers were - perhaps more so. I spoke to the American Bankers Association on "World Law to Protect World Investment," to the American Medical Association on "Medical- Legal Cooperation." The members of groups like these saw the improvement of law not as a public service, but as a way of accomplishing their business goals.
By the time I took office as ABA President in 1957, I had helped lead the ABA, kicking and screaming, into a world in which nations no longer could remain isolated from each other. In the 1950's, the future of the United Nations—and especially its International Court of Justice—inspired lawyers to the kind of debate which gun control and the death penalty do today.
The immediate inspiration for a May I celebration of law was directly related to the Cold War. For many years the American news media gave front page headlines and pictures to the Soviet Union's May Day parade of new war weapons. I was distressed that so much attention was given to war-making rather than peace-keeping.
My idea was to contrast the United States' reliance on the rule of law with the Soviet Union's rule by force. To that end, I drafted a U.S. Presidential Proclamation, which made its way from John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, to Sherman Adams, Chief of Staff to President Eisenhower, and stopped there.
It had seemed such a sure thing that Dulles had affixed his signature, authenticating the President's signature, before the Proclamation was presented to Eisenhower. Dulles then left on a trip. Because Dulles was so respected, not only by Eisenhower but by the world, I wanted his signature on the Proclamation rather than some assistant's.
Time passed. May 1 was fast approaching and I had heard nothing, so I went to see Governor Adams. He pulled the Proclamation out of his desk and gave it back to me saying "the President will not sign a proclamation praising lawyers."
I strode down to the Oval Office and handed it to President Eisenhower himself. As he stood there reading it, Adams burst in yelling "Do not sign that paper praising lawyers!"
The President held his hand up for silence until he had read the entire document. Then he said "Sherm, this Proclamation does not contain one word praising lawyers. It praises our constitutional system of government, our great heritage under the rule of law, and asks our people to stand up and praise what they have created. I like it and I am going to sign it." And he did. You have been given copies of the Proclamation.
It has always seemed to me that Governor Adams thought I was urging, not recognition of Law Day, but recognition of a Lawyers Day, sort of like Mothers Day or Fathers Day. I am glad that President Eisenhower set him straight.
I was pleased to see, beginning May 1, 1958, that newspapers, television and radio programs, bar associations and citizens throughout the country celebrated the benefits of our system of rule of law, in stark contrast to the Soviets' grim show of force.
Since 1958, Law Day observances have become a major part of the bar association year in state and local bar associations throughout the country. The ABA, too, has sponsored Law Day celebrations for these last 43 years, and every President has issued a proclamation stressing the importance of law to the preservation of liberty and individual rights.
In the meantime, the concept of Law Day has spread to other nations. The first World Law Day was celebrated in 1965. Heads of nations also have declared Law Day within their own nations, often in conjunction with the biennial conferences of the World Peace Through Law Center and its World Jurist Association. The celebration is especially extensive in the nation hosting the conference.
The World Law Day celebration, by its simple occurrence, can further the rule of law. For example, in April 1990, the World Peace Through Law Center met in Beijing, China. The occasion of the conference and World Law Day offered Li Peng, Premier of China, an opportunity to make a formal declaration embracing the rule of law, progress toward a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons, and the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. China's sentiments, of course, will be judged by its actions - but now it will be harder to act contrary to the public declaration. With Li Peng's declaration. Law Day has advanced from pointing out the Soviet Union's rejection of the rule of law, to facilitating China's acceptance of the rule of law.
The typical Law Day observance here in the United States now has less to do with substituting an international rule of law for military force, and more to do with providing wills for seniors and legal representation for low income tenants facing eviction.
These are laudable pro bono activities—ones in which lawyers should be engaged more than once a year. Such activities might appear, to the superficial observer, to have departed from the original rationale of Law Day.
However, I think that the current state of Law Day observance bears a closer relation to the original concept than is immediately apparent. The Cold War ended, of course, with the collapse of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe. The collapse of Communism—and the use of government repression as its method of maintaining control of a nation and an empire - came about because the peoples living under repression no longer were willing to do so. Even in peaceful transitions in Russia, in Germany, and in other nations, the Communist leaders recognized that their peoples no longer would tolerate being deprived of a say in how their economies and their liberties were governed. The World Peace Through Law Center and World Jurist Association, with which I long have been associated, recently erected a monument at the place where the border between Austria and Hungary was opened in 1989, creating a hole in the Iron Curtain and an exodus to freedom which the Soviet Red Army was powerless to close.
But dissatisfaction begets reform only where an alternative system of governance is seen as workable. The western system of law, so prominently displayed on Law Day, has provided just such a workable alternative for those living under Communism.
I have been able to see how this process has worked in this country with voting rights, another of the original and recurring Law Day themes. I argued the one-person-one-vote case of Baker v. Carr in the Supreme Court in 1961 and 1962. Before that case, many people recognized the inequality in representation between urban and rural areas in the state legislatures. Since most minorities by the 1960's lived in cities, this inequality had a racial aspect to it as well. The problem was the refusal of the federal courts to intervene, on the ground that reapportionment was a political question; in 1946, Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote an opinion in Colegrove v. Green coining the term "political thicket," which seemed to describe the practical as well as legal problems a federal court would face in trying to reform a state or local government system. From 1946 until 1961, litigants in 15 different cases had tried, and failed, to get the Supreme Court to review the malapportionment of state legislatures.
I spent days in the law library reviewing the 15 unsuccessful petitions and jurisdictional statements, trying to determine why they failed. Many lawyers who try cases and argue appeals will tell you they learn by watching other lawyers - but they learn more from others' failures than from their successes.
All of you would have enjoyed the argument in Baker v. Carr and my personal battle with Justice Frankfurter. He jumped on me as I opened my argument, saying that when the Court decides great constitutional cases, it tries hard to avoid jurisdiction. He then, in statement after statement, defended his opinion of years before, that reapportionment was a political thicket courts dared not enter. As Justice Frankfurter made each statement, he pounded the bench in front of him for emphasis. He accused me of not answering his questions; he accused me of misreading the precedents, both state and federal; he tried to pin me down on how much of a population disparity between legislative districts would be permissible; he argued that a victory for my clients required overruling those 15 years worth of Supreme Court cases. I hoped his ferocity betrayed his realization that he would be writing a dissenting opinion, not the opinion for the court. Finally Justice Frankfurter paused to catch his breath and I said to him, "If you will allow me to respond to your statements, I will do so in one word." Chief Justice Warren leaned over and said, "Justice Frankfurter, why not let Mr. Rhyne give us that one-word answer." Justice Frankfurter pushed back from the bench and I said the one-word answer was "equality, the states cannot deny equal protection of the laws. The Fourteenth Amendment requires this equal protection and it is your duty to enforce that provision." Justice Frankfurter said "Do not tell me my duty—get on with it." I then quoted the 14th amendment's words on the equality requirement, added that reliance on the political process to enforce that requirement was no remedy and a mockery of justice, and sat down.
The Court voted six to two in favor of my argument. In its opinion, the Court said that the doctrine restricting court interference in matters committed to the judgment of other branches of government "is one of 'political questions,' not one of 'political cases.' The courts cannot reject as 'no law suit' a bona fide controversy as to whether some action denominated 'political' exceeds constitutional authority."
This opinion was written by Justice Brennan. Chief Justice Warren called Baker the most important case decided by his Court. It may seem unmodest—but I agree. I agree because Baker reaffirms that the rule of law means that the law prevails over politics. That, too, is a principle worth remembering on Law Day.
After Baker was decided in 1962, there was a flood of voting and other civil rights activity, both in the courts and by direct citizen action. In some small way, the success in Baker, I think, helped persuade both citizens and lawyers that reform could be accomplished in the courts, and, for the lawyers, served as a model for lawsuits seeking political change.
The same breakthrough can occur internationally. Much attention has been given in the decade since the fall of Communism to creating a system of laws on the western model to be implemented by government officials in the new democracies; the models consist largely of codes of criminal procedure and business affairs. But, in addition to these reforms, the new democracies will need laws which the people implement themselves: laws governing wills, contracts, consumer transactions, landlord-tenant relations. Making the law in these areas available to ordinary people is the stuff of current state and local Law Day observance. I think this retail-level version of Law Day offers the same potential for reform in other nations as the original version of Law Day helped reform national institutions.
The Internet can help bring this kind of law to the peoples of the world. People in China, for example, who think there should be a Bill of Rights there guaranteeing religious freedom, can use the Internet to collect the bills of rights of the United States, the United Nations, and the European Union, as well as the other treaties and conventions. They can follow the application of our Bill of Rights to new situations in the courts. Tenants can collect leases approved by the courts of the world's nations, and consumers can see what constitutes fraud and adhesion throughout the world. Knowing that there are workable models, which are enforced daily, will strengthen the urge to reform at home.
The rapid change in Internet technology creates the illusion that the idea of using computers to make legal information more accessible is a new one. But, the World Peace Through Law Center, of which I spoke, collected the information on existing computerized legal research programs in 1966, when Lexis was a demonstration project of the Ohio State Bar, and West Publishing Company was sure that nothing would intrude on the domain of the printed case report. Some surprising law leaders saw the potential of the computer. In 1967, Chief Justice Earl Warren was the interested and enthusiastic chairman of an exhibition on this subject which the Center put on at its world conference in Geneva.
There have been proposals to create and fund a university residing largely if not entirely on the Internet. In addition to the obvious usefulness in making courses available for college credit, an Internet university could, and should, make the information contained in the courses available to non-students. I think the same thing should be done for legal education. A by-product of an Internet law school would be making law available to non-lawyers, both reformers and consumers.
I hope that the opportunity which Law Day provides to reflect on the use of law by both nations and individuals will prompt both you in this audience and the leaders of nations to explore ways in which not only the Internet, but also other new technologies, can make more law more readily available to those who need it.
Thank you.
