@ Micael

The most interesting relation that a lawyer holds to the community, outside of his technical occupation, is that of a legislator. Lawyers were the chief authors of the Constitution of the United States and of all the state constitutions.

It seems natural that lawyers should predominate in the government. They framed the former instrument. They both make and interpret the law.

Every time the text is in italics, it is a direct quote from the book.

Lawyers control every branch of the republican form of government: legislative, executive, and judicial. The influence of the lawyers is enormous, for good or for evil.

The lawyer has the supreme power of direction in the general exercise, commencement, and conduct of litigated or other legal matters. It lies with him to suggest and to direct. There is no arbiter over him but his conscience.

The duty of a lawyer is threefold: to the state, as an officer and citizen; to the court, as an officer and adviser; and to his client, as a fiduciary.

The crude sentiments of the people must be filtered through the lawyers, first as politicians, then as legislators, and afterwards as lawyers and judges.

Since lawyers are in charge of every government branch as ‘elected officials’ in representation of the people, education about morality and their duties and responsibilities is fundamental since in their hands lies the monopoly of violence held by the government.

Without contingent arrangements with lawyers, their power would become oppressive and tyrannical.

THE PROBLEM

“Permit me to issue and control the currency of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812)

1. Money was placed above rightness, truth, and justice. The incentive structure is inverted, and it's detrimental. Society is morally bankrupt above and below. Institutions are no better than the individuals who compose them.
2. Common law was replaced by commercial code (encryption). Adding complexity, inefficiencies, costs, and capacity to trick and twist the law. The incentive structure is broken. Cheating pays more than playing clean; we have more lawyers but less justice.
3. The lawyer is not educated about the spirit of the profession, his duty, and the form of government he’s supposed to protect. The interest of the client is put above the interest of the court and the nation. Jurisprudence is taught instead of elementary law.

INSTITUTIONS CANNOT BE BETTER THAN THE MEMBERS OF WHICH THEY ARE COMPOSED. THE GOVERNMENT IS NO DIFFERENT.

The combined acts of a body of lawyers, oft repeated, like an army of worms, silently and secretly gnawing at the foundation of a great and magnificent structure, will gradually but surely cause it to give way and tumble into ruins. It is perhaps not going too far to assert that the lawyers, as a class, are largely answerable for the minimum of respect and obedience that the public has for the law.

1. Money was placed above rightness, truth, and justice.

Commercialism and materialism have placed money above everything else, including the human. This has completely demoralized society in every aspect, from government and justice to education, architecture, medicine, nutrition, and so on.

This has a common denominator: the quality of the currency. As the quality of the currency evaporates, so does the values of the people. But money and currency are inanimate and dead objects; the real actors are the humans trading and using that money.

The ‘fiat money’ we use these days is a result of codified law, a legal fiction for money, a commercial contract paper to exchange goods and services, and a creature of the codified public and private law.

This fiat currency has enabled its possessors to buy, or secure, political and social positions, which should be attained only by real merit, refinement, and learning.

Today judicial systems do not provide justice, newspapers and mainstream media do not provide the truth, today banks do not protect your money, today medical treatment does not cure you, etc. Profit is placed above everything else.

It was evident that materialism completely controlled the economic structure, the ultimate goal of which was for the individual to become part of a system that provided him with economic security at the expense of his soul, mind, and body.

Manly P. Hall, 1988

Society was morally bankrupted by materialistic ideologies and human institutions that are no better than the individuals who compose them.

No judicial action can be put in motion without the sanction of some lawyer.

The lawyer appears everywhere and in all stages of business transactions but also in family and other private and delicate matters as the trusted advisor and friend of his client.

There is a moral corruption, equally as bad in its results upon the judges, the bar, and the community.

2. The incentive structure is inverted, and it's detrimental.

Moral relativism justifies every wrongdoing since ‘there’s no objective difference between right and wrong.’ How can you have justice if you can justify every wrongdoing and there’s no moral compass?

But if being a member of a club or friends with the judge gives you an edge, how can you have excellence, meritocracy, and justice? The incentive is to short-cup your way, to cheat, to manipulate the game and law to your advantage to get economic stability.

If you want to have justice and great institutions, you need to educate their members in a high level of morality, ethics, and purpose…

The commercial code replaced common law. The difference between a common-law lawyer and the practitioner under the Code is the difference between a surgeon and a butcher.

Codification has produced more material to aid dishonest clients than the common law supplied. The lawyers as a body are morally worse than their professional ancestors. The lawyers of the past believed the constitution was adaptable; those of the present regard it as elastic.

Laws have accumulated really fast, creating inextricable confusion and doubt. Making justice was turned into a thing of doubt and change.

Instead of seeking the truth, the courts and the bar are engaged in the pursuit of technicality and form.

A precedent can be found on any side of any subject that anyone chooses to espouse.

The ratio of lawyers has multiplied four times since the law was codified and its complexity increased. The code was adopted in New York in 1848. Argentina's Commercial Code was first adopted by the Province of Buenos Aires in 1859 and later as the national code in 1862. In 1850 there was 1 lawyer per 1000 citizens in the United States. Now there is 1 in 256.

The excessive number of lawyers is detrimental, both to the community and the morale of the profession.

It creates, encourages, and continues illegal, unfounded, and fraudulent practices, demands, and litigations, because necessarily many of the lawyers depend not upon professional knowledge and accomplishments but upon sharpness and cunning. In the effort to sustain themselves, much unnecessary and unfounded litigation is inaugurated, and many disgraceful practices are engendered.

Let anyone consider the effect of the forty or fifty thousand legal agents spending their lives distorting and prostituting the forms of justice, misapplying and perverting its principles, and undermining the constitution and laws, and they can make a fairly accurate calculation as to the longevity of the system of government under which they exist and thrive.

Cunning and trickery have replaced real knowledge and ethics.

The modern code lawyer knows little of elementary law, but he carries, as a soldier would a knapsack, a memory filled with sections of codes and adjudicated cases.

Sheltered in the grip of his office, the lawyer can always, insidiously and secretly, deflect the course of justice and defraud the law. It is difficult to detect him; he is representing another’s interest and is not responsible for his client’s morals or frauds.

To say nothing of the extra cost and expenses, the manifold delays and intricacies of legal procedure, the attempt to simplify has been to muddle, confound, and destroy—to produce a race of pygmy lawyers, chattering and quarreling over the meaning of words in the Code.

The ones who benefit from codification are the same ones who benefit from fiat currencies and central banks. They have used the same strategy in both cases: create a problem, manipulate public opinion and make them demand the ‘solution’ they have already prepared—codification of law, central banks, etc. Time has shown that the public was manipulated and that the solutions that was sold to them only increased the size of the problem they were ‘trying’ to fix.

Picture the lawyers training themselves in a school of dishonesty, trickery, and chicanery, diverting and stopping the machinery of the law, prostituting the forms of justice for gain, selling their knowledge, ability, experience, and such talent as they may possess to the client who pays most for the service, and resorting to every device of cunning and deceit to gain their end! Do such lawyers exist? Do such practices prevail? Unfortunately, yes. In the first rank of the profession can be found many lawyers whose services are sought only to enable guilty men to escape punishment; only to open a door for others to avoid the consequences of the civil law and of their contracts; only to defeat and evade the legislative will and public policy; only to show their clients how to cheat, defraud, vilify, and defame without penalty or damage.

His profession consists of thwarting the law instead of enforcing it. The modern idea of a great lawyer is one who can most successfully manipulate the law and the facts. The public no longer calls them “great” but “successful” lawyers. Not a great jurist or profound student, but a successful practitioner.

The more desperate the case he wins, the greater his reputation.

It is the common belief, inside and outside of the profession, that the most brilliant and learned of the lawyers are employed to defeat or strangle justice.

In this view, every lawyer might be regarded as an intellectual prostitute whose mind, time, experience, knowledge, and influence can be hired and occupied by any stranger who desires to comply with his terms as to fees.

There is nothing secret or underhand about this part of the lawyer’s business. It has the approval of the people everywhere.

In fact, the community looks with perfect complacency and composure upon a transaction in which the leading lawyer sells his talent, his knowledge, his time, and his influence to the most corrupt or infamous individual in the land.

The lawyer is deliberately made an instrument to thwart the law and justice—and he knows it.

He uses the machinery of the law to accomplish results contrary to justice, truth, and right.

When the laws can be easily thwarted, the moral sense of the whole community is deadened. The incentive for justice was inverted and destroyed.

3. The lawyer is not educated about the spirit of the profession.

The lawyer’s power arises from the necessity of political organization; he is the official and authorized agent that puts in motion the machinery of the law.

In the commencement of suits, the lawyer has need, therefore, of honesty, learning, prudence, and patriotism. It rests with him to preserve the purity of the legal system; to separate the chaff of fraud, exaggeration, and doubt from the wheat of fact and truth.

The government exists for the people, not the people for the government.

American governments were organized by the people to provide the people a peaceful way of resolving conflicts and trading peacefully, providing justice and the protection of private property and equality under the law. The public is taxed for the general expenses of the courts, among other things.

Here’s the secret, -the cornerstone- of all legislation.

The goal is to have an easy and understandable set of rules that everyone can understand: to make as few laws as possible; for, in all normal and sound conditions of society, that country is best governed which is least governed. But codification has done the opposite: add complexity and create thousands of codified laws.

Here’s the secret, -the cornerstone- of all legislation.

The legislator should, therefore, be a man who understands the origin and nature of society- familiar with past and existing laws and history- with such practical and discriminating judgment as enables him to comprehend the wants and necessities of his fellow men.

Still, none of the formal oaths defines the duties of the lawyer.

Everything is now left to the moral perception of the lawyer.

THE LOYALTY TO ITS CLIENT (THE HAND THAT FEEDS HIS MOUTH) IS PLACED ABOVE THE ALLIANCE TO THE STATE (THE HAND THAT FEEDS THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM).

It is not the exception, but the rule, for the lawyer to surrender his whole mental, intellectual, and physical power to his client’s cause.

REMEDY

To produce lawyers who can perform their duties, they should be taught to cultivate a moral sense; the nature and object of law; the nature and duties of citizenship; the nature and duties of a legislator; but above and beyond everything else, they should be taught the real mission of the lawyer - which includes professional ethics. These fundamental requisites to the making of a full lawyer are almost entirely overlooked in all of the courses of education followed in law offices, law schools, and academies or colleges. Lawyers are made up to be mere instruments for their clients, without any attention being paid to their duties to the State. The fact is extraordinary, nay, incredible. But it is true. The curriculum of legal study is based upon codification. O means the sentiment of codification., pervades and influences all legal education.

If the moral sense of the community, which is another name for public opinion, should be maintained to the highest possible degree, an educated Bar, and a free, pure and intelligent Press, are the factors which can do much to accomplish all these results.

But this conscience, which should guide the lawyer, comes from training and education.

Trained in the knowledge of human nature, when he enters the field of jurisprudence and politics, his acts and opinions should be of the greatest value to the people. I would build up a race of pure lawyers, as far removed from commercialism as possible.

The country needs such a class more than ever.