Let s not kill all the lawyers: Lawyers, literature and why it matters

Transcription

1 Let s not kill all the lawyers: Lawyers, literature and why it matters Perhaps the most famous literary quotation concerning lawyers is the following offering from Shakespeare: The first thing we do, let s kill all the lawyers. It is true that lawyers, on the whole, are not a popular group of people. Few would contest the proposition that modern lawyers belong in an almost purely commercial professional class, and are occupational neighbours to bankers, accountants and politicians. This is a basic assumption that many students enter law school subscribing to, and a fundamental reality of legal practice that these are the people that we spend a substantial amount of time dealing with. However, to look no further than this assumption would be to seriously misconceive of the nature of the legal profession. One of the most productive and helpful ways of looking beyond this assumption would be to add to the teaching of law and legal practice the teaching of literature. While an addition to a law student s workload is unlikely to be welcomed, there is more at stake in this inquiry than convenience. Our understanding of what exactly it is to be a lawyer, where we stand and what we can do is compromised by the absence of at least basic familiarity with literature. This is not to propose a comprehensive study from Beowulf to Wolf Hall, but there are certain texts of which a working knowledge would be of particular benefit to law students and young lawyers. The study of Plato and Shelley might significantly alter the student s understanding of the lawyer s professional context beyond current appearances, the study of poetry would provide a far more nuanced and conscious appreciation of the mechanics of language than results from our lessons in plain English drafting, and the study of lawyers in literature more generally would ask the student to consider and perhaps reconsider the lawyer s place and role in society, and how that informs their conception of their chosen profession. Lawyers and poets *** As suggested above, it is difficult to avoid the perception that the true focus of a lawyer is on timesheets, and that we worship an object called the Fee. 1 While this perception applies equally to professions such as banking or accountancy, many might be surprised to learn that these may not be our true professional kin. The study of law through the lens of literature provides a dramatically different and intriguing picture of what our role in society has been, and may still be. The study of certain texts suggests that lawyers have much older and deeper alliances with the poets, and belong to class populated with philosophers and writers rather than politicians and bankers. One of the most striking examples of this ancient 1 Joseph Tartakovsky, Dickens v. Lawyers (5 February 2012) The New York Times < 1

2 alliance is also one of the earliest. In Plato s The Laws, when approached by poets wanting to enter the city, the lawmakers respond that they are also poets, 2 rivals and competitors in making the most beautiful drama. 3 They are rivals in fashioning human life and in a well-ordered society they must speak with one voice. 4 The theme of lawyers and poets sharing the task of social architecture continues to the nineteenth century, most notably in Percy Bysshe Shelley s A Defence of Poetry. Poets, he writes, were once called legislators, and are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life. 5 He famously concludes that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. 6 We therefore see lawmakers arguing that they are poets, and poets arguing that they are lawmakers an argument that has remained consistent over more than two thousand years. Both professions share the roles of sculptor and designer, and they stand together as those whose words genuinely have the power to influence and develop their society. It is no small thing to stand with this group of people. Nor is it a point that those entering the profession can afford to be ignorant of, especially given that lawyers today retain far greater immediate practical power to influence and legislate than writers and poets do. An understanding of this responsibility informed by the study of literature such as The Laws or A Defence of Poetry would have a significant effect on a law student s understanding of what it is to be a lawyer and what their place in the world might be, and is therefore worth pursuing as part of our training. Lawyers and poetry The study of literature also has more prosaic tools to offer the law student. The teaching of law and of legal practice places great emphasis on plain English drafting, and on keeping our words as clear and free of embellishment as possible. Adding to this the study of literature and the study of poetry in particular would improve this teaching by demonstrating that language can be powerful and elegant as well as clear and efficient, and that the linguistic tools that serve the poets will serve the lawyers equally well. Owen Barfield himself both a writer and a lawyer has observed that just as the study of law was once a valuable exercise for other purposes besides the practice of law, so today the study of poetry and of the poetic element in all meaningful language is a valuable exercise for other purposes than the practice or better enjoyment of 2 Plato, The Laws (Digireads.com Publishing, 2009) Elizabeth Asmis, Plato on poetic creativity in Richard Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge University Press, 1992) 338, Ibid. 5 Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry in Duncan Wu (ed.), Romanticism: An Anthology (Blackwell Publishing, 3 rd ed., 2006) 1184, Ibid,

3 poetry. 7 It is pleasingly circular that these other purposes include the practice of law. In pursuit of the poetic element in meaningful language, we find that lawyers and poets undergo similar training in the distillation of words to their simplest and most potent form. Samuel Taylor Coleridge in particular recalls a plain English drafting lesson in his schoolroom, during which his teacher showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words 8 In law students and young lawyers, this pursuit of plain words often results in abrupt phrasing or clumsy diction, but the study of Coleridge s poetry would offer a demonstration of how force and dignity is to be imparted to our writing while maintaining its simplicity and efficiency. One of the most instructive examples of Coleridge s ability to embed rich meaning in words without recourse to elaborate adornment is his Kubla Khan. 9 It is a short but haunting poem, containing some of the most mesmerizing imagery in Romantic poetry. This entrancing, mesmerizing effect is cultivated from the first line by the strident opening salvo: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure-dome decree. The first five lines use subtle alliteration to enforce the exotic images conjured for the reader by the word Xanadu, stacking the pairs to drive the point home: Kubla Khan, dome decree, river ran, measureless to man, and sunless sea. The effect, in combination with rhythm and rhyme, is the achievement of total command of the reader s attention, now able to be directed at will. The opening three lines of the following stanza exert this control, especially if the poem is read aloud, by deploying diction that forces the reader to mimic the events described. Coleridge literally makes the reader gape to pronounce oh, that deep romantic chasm which slanted, causes them to pick up pace as if tumbling down a green hill athwart a cedarn cover, and compels them to gnash their teeth as they reach a savage place. This poem is just one example of how meaning might be woven into the fabric of words, but the awareness it raises of the available methods for writing in a way that commands the reader and subtly shapes their experience of the material without sacrificing the benefits of plain language is an immensely valuable addition to the training of those who are to spend their careers working with words. Why does it matter? It might be argued at this point that it is now 2013, and modern lawyers can function perfectly well without knowing anything about ancient ties with poets or how to infuse language with meaning when a quick might do as well. It might be 7 Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning (Wesleyan University Press, 1973) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria; or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions (Leavitt, Lord & Co (New York), and Crocker & Brewster (Boston)), 1834) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan in Duncan Wu (ed.), Romanticism: An Anthology (Blackwell Publishing, 3 rd ed., 2006) 621,

4 argued that requiring law students to read books as well is an unnecessary burden and a waste of valuable learning time. In the race to win a clerkship or a graduate position, what difference can these things possibly make? Why does the study of literature matter to the training of lawyers? It matters because the figure of the lawyer actually stands for something. It has already been mentioned that the most famous literary reference to lawyers may be this: The first thing we do, let s kill all the lawyers. It comes from Shakespeare s Henry VI Part II, and follows the rebel Jack Cade s manifesto of dissolving the structures giving shape to his society when he is king, he says, There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny: the threehooped pot shall have ten hoops, and I will make it a felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey [horse] go to grass 10 It is immediately replied that to achieve this, the lawyers must die (although a lawyer reader might query how Cade is to make anything a felony or reorganise the country s land holding system without them). The lawyers stand as the first and greatest obstacle to Cade s proposed chaos. It is not one particular lawyer who opposes Cade; it is the profession as one body taken to oppose his ideology of anarchy. The lawyer is used as a symbol of order and of civilisation, and of the well-ordered society envisioned by Plato in which they and the poets speak with one voice. 11 This is a small episode in one play, and although suggestive perhaps does not alone warrant study by law students. But there are other memorable lawyers in literature that are worth closer investigation, and are part of the cultural treasure chest that a law student inherits and should be aware of. Horace Rumpole is a figure that springs languidly to mind, with his stubborn refusal to be impressed by QCs and his passionate argument for his socially unfortunate habit of defending accused criminals: What does it matter? If a boy loses a year, a couple of years, of his life? [ ] Crime? It s a sort of game. How can you compare it to the real world of Off Shore Securities And Deductible Expenses? 12 Others include the lawyer as the saviour as presented by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice, or the lawyer as the stock dramatic figure with wise sayings and flawless conveyances as presented by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales, or even the lawyer as cadaverous, carnivorous parasite as presented by Dickens in David Copperfield and Bleak House. They all have something of value to impart to those considering and entering the profession, and we are the poorer if we never meet them. 10 William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part II in Henry VI: Parts I, II and III (Macmillan Publishers, 2012) IV Asmis, above n John Mortimer, Rumpole of the Bailey (Penguin Books, 1984) 45. 4

5 *** There are very few professional groups that inherit the kind and quantity of cultural riches that lawyers do. We are an ancient, clever and consistent group, with the benefit of over two millennia of self-reflection in literature. It is important that we learn some of this culture so that we fully appreciate the privilege and the responsibility that arise from our kinship with the poets as architects of society, so that we genuinely master the tools of the language with which we work, and so that we truly engage with the question of what it has meant and does mean to be a lawyer. The teaching of law and legal practice would therefore be meaningfully improved by introducing in some form the study of literature, so that students and young lawyers have the opportunity to form a full and thoughtful understanding of the profession they seek to join. Let s not kill all the lawyers let s give them books to read instead. 5