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Posts Tagged ‘Progressive Era’

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Our Real Constitution—And What Happened to It

In American History, Arts & Letters, Book Reviews, Books, Conservatism, History, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, liberal arts, Philosophy, Politics, Scholarship, Western Philosophy on January 25, 2017 at 6:45 am

Allen Mendenhall

This review originally appeared here in The University Bookman.

Conservatism lost a giant when George W. Carey passed away in 2013. Thanks to Bruce Frohnen, his longtime friend, we’re able to hear anew Carey’s prudent admonitions in these strange and interesting times.

Before his death, Carey completed drafts of chapters on progressivism and progressive constitutional reform that later became substantial portions of two chapters in Constitutional Morality and the Rise of Quasi-Law, the book that Frohnen has now completed. The final product is an impressively collaborative effort that substantiates the idea of constitutional morality, which Carey spent years developing.

The two men had planned to split the chapters in half. Having few disagreements between them, they reserved the right to approve and edit each other’s contributions. Carey’s untimely passing changed these plans. To honor his friend, Frohnen consulted Carey’s work carefully, downplaying his own more “antifederalist” positions to accommodate Carey’s more federalist leanings. If Jefferson and Hamilton would have agreed that the size and scope of the American government has become dangerous and unmanageable, then it’s no surprise that Frohnen and Carey found common ground.

Constitutional morality denotes “the felt duty of government officials … to abide by the restrictions and imperatives imposed on them by a constitution.” It contemplates the “unwritten constitution,” a concept central to Frohnen and Carey’s argument that’s drawn from Russell Kirk and Orestes Brownson, both of whom Frohnen in particular has interpreted thoughtfully and skilfully. Kirk defined the unwritten constitution as “the body of institutions, customs, manners, conventions, and voluntary associations which may not even be mentioned in the formal constitution, but which nevertheless form the fabric of social reality and sustain the formal constitution.” To maintain their authority and gain general acceptance in a community, written constitutions and positive laws must reflect the norms and values of the people they bind. Frohnen and Carey’s narrative is about how quasi-law in the form of executive decree and the administrative state have become divorced from the people they govern.

The narrative runs something like this. Rule by executive command and administrative agencies has resulted in a decline of the rule of law in the United States. Odd, extratextual interpretations of the United States Constitution have dislocated its content from the common understandings of reasonably prudent Americans. The Progressive Era facilitated a shift in our approach to law that was qualitatively different from the teachings of checks-and-balances, decentralization, separation-of-powers, and other such doctrines alive in the minds of our Founders, even those like Hamilton and the young Madison (as against the later Madison) who favored a strong national government. Consequently, we have found ourselves in a crisis of constitutional morality, there being little institutional and systemic accountability to curb the broad powers of bureaucracy, reckless and unelected federal judges, a delegating congress beholden to lobbyists and corporations, and the expansion of executive privilege, prerogative, and patronage.

Political rhetoric of limited government, common among Republican leaders, does not square with the manifest reality of the ever-growing managerial state. Heated discourse alone won’t suffice to roll back federal programs and agencies. “What is required,” say Frohnen and Carey, “is a retrenchment of the federal government into a much smaller but more detailed and legalistic form that allows more actions to be taken by other institutions, be they states, localities, or associations within civil society.” In short, these men call for devolution and subsidiarity. They make the case for localized control based on clear rules that are consistent with common norms and expressed in a shared idiom.

Championing the rule of law involves the recognition that, although morality does or should underpin laws, “we cannot use the tool of law to achieve perfect virtue, or freedom, or any other moral good.” Without denying the importance or reality of natural law, which is antecedent to human promulgation, Frohnen and Carey approach it cautiously, stating that it “is not a rigid code demanding that human law force all human beings into a straightjacket of specific individual conduct.” Seemingly skeptical of grand schemes for the magnificent systematization and organization of natural-law principles, they humbly submit that humans “can only do our best to develop practical lawmaking and interpreting virtues such that the laws we make will be efficacious in spelling out and enforcing duties in such a way as perhaps to encourage people to pursue virtue.” This nomocratic mode of thinking recalls Hume, Burke, Oakeshott, Kirk, and Hayek with its awareness of the limitations of human knowledge and its attention to the historical, institutional, and cultural embeddedness of standards and values.

If there is one take-home point from this book, it’s that government is not the instrument through which to facilitate the good, the true, or the beautiful. We should avoid the “new dispensation” that consists in “a government ruled not by formal structures and procedures but by the pursuit of putatively good policy through broad statements of programmatic goals and the exercise of broad discretionary power.” Disempowering the central government may be the obvious counter to this new dispensation, but we’ve been advocating that for decades. In fact, Frohnen and Carey believe that “there can be no simple return to the original dispensation,” which involved “the Framers’ constitutional morality, emphasizing procedure, caution, and restrained defense of one’s institutional prerogatives.”

With no quick and easy remedy at the ready, Frohnen and Carey encourage something less magnificent and extraordinary: civic participation in local associations and mediating institutions such as “families, unions, clubs, schools, and religious groups,” the kinds of little platoons that struck Alexis de Tocqueville, during his tour of America, as bulwarks against tyranny. “More important than any particular policy,” Frohnen and Carey aver, “is the attitude toward law and policy making that must be recaptured.” Although they suggest that some form of separation or secession may become inevitable, the corrective they envision is rhetorical and discursive. We must, in their view, shape the political discourse through private associations, which, in the aggregate, engender the bottom-up processes of rulemaking that reflect the normative orders of local communities rather than the top-down commands of a faraway, massive, impersonal sovereign.

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Abolish the Bar Exam

In America, American History, History, Law on July 23, 2014 at 8:45 am

Allen 2

This article originally appeared here at LewRockwell.comand was reposted on this blog last year in July.  I repost it here again this year for all those who are taking the bar exam this week and next week.

Every year in July, thousands of anxious men and women, in different states across America, take a bar exam in hopes that they will become licensed attorneys. Having memorized hundreds if not thousands of rules and counter-rules — also known as black letter law — these men and women come to the exam equipped with their pens, laptops, and government-issued forms of identification. Nothing is more remote from their minds than that the ideological currents that brought about this horrifying ritual were fundamentally statist and unquestionably bad for the American economy.

The bar exam is a barrier to entry, as are all forms of professional licensure. Today the federal government regulates thousands of occupations and excludes millions of capable workers from the workforce by means of expensive tests and certifications; likewise various state governments restrict upward mobility and economic progress by mandating that workers obtain costly degrees and undergo routinized assessments that have little to do with the practical, everyday dealings of the professional world.

As a practicing attorney, I can say with confidence that many paralegals I know can do the job of an attorney better than some attorneys, and that is because the practice of law is perfected not by abstract education but lived experience.

So why does our society require bar exams that bear little relation to the ability of a person to understand legal technicalities, manage case loads, and satisfy clients? The answer harkens back to the Progressive Era when elites used government strings and influence to prevent hardworking and entrepreneurial individuals from climbing the social ladder.

Lawyers were part of two important groups that Murray Rothbard blamed for spreading statism during the Progressive Era: the first was “a growing legion of educated (and often overeducated) intellectuals, technocrats, and the ‘helping professions’ who sought power, prestige, subsidies, contracts, cushy jobs from the welfare state, and restrictions of entry into their field via forms of licensing,” and the second was “groups of businessmen who, after failing to achieve monopoly power on the free market, turned to government — local, state, and federal — to gain it for them.”

The bar exam was merely one aspect of the growth of the legal system and its concomitant centralization in the early twentieth century. Bar associations began cropping up in the 1870s, but they were, at first, more like professional societies than state-sponsored machines. By 1900, all of that changed, and bar associations became a fraternity of elites opposed to any economic development that might threaten their social status. The elites who formed the American Bar Association (ABA), concerned that smart and savvy yet poor and entrepreneurial men might gain control of the legal system, sought to establish a monopoly on the field by forbidding advertising, regulating the “unauthorized” practice of law, restricting legal fees to a designated minimum or maximum, and scaling back contingency fees. The elitist progressives pushing these reforms also forbade qualified women from joining their ranks.

The American Bar Association was far from the only body of elites generating this trend. State bars began to rise and spread, but only small percentages of lawyers in any given state were members. The elites were reaching to squeeze some justification out of their blatant discrimination and to strike a delicate balance between exclusivity on the one hand, and an appearance of propriety on the other. They made short shrift of the American Dream and began to require expensive degrees and education as a prerequisite for bar admission. It was at this time that American law schools proliferated and the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) was created to evaluate the quality of new law schools as well as to hold them to uniform standards.

At one time lawyers learned on the job; now law schools were tasked with training new lawyers, but the result was that lawyers’ real training was merely delayed until the date they could practice, and aspiring attorneys had to be wealthy enough to afford this delay if they wanted to practice at all.

Entrepreneurial forces attempted to fight back by establishing night schools to ensure a more competitive market, but the various bar associations, backed by the power of the government, simply dictated that law school was not enough: one had to first earn a college degree before entering law school if one were to be admitted to practice. Then two degrees were not enough: one had to pass a restructured, formalized bar exam as well.

Bar exams have been around in America since the eighteenth century, but before the twentieth century they were relaxed and informal and could have been as simple as interviewing with a judge. At the zenith of the Progressive Era, however, they had become an exclusive licensing agency for the government. It is not surprising that at this time bar associations became, in some respects, as powerful as the states themselves. That’s because bar associations were seen, as they are still seen today, as agents and instrumentalities of the state, despite that their members were not, and are not, elected by the so-called public.

In our present era, hardly anyone thinks twice of the magnificent powers exercised and enjoyed by state bar associations, which are unquestionably the most unquestioned monopolies in American history. What other profession than law can claim to be entirely self-regulated? What other profession than law can go to such lengths to exclude new membership and to regulate the industry standards of other professions?

Bar associations remain, on the whole, as progressive today as they were at their inception. Their calls for pro bono work and their bias against creditors’ attorneys, to name just two examples, are wittingly or unwittingly part of a greater movement to consolidate state power and to spread ideologies that increase dependence upon the state and “the public welfare.” It is rare indeed to find the rhetoric of personal responsibility or accountability in a bar journal. Instead, lawyers are reminded of their privileged and dignified station in life, and of their unique position in relation to “members of the public.”

The thousands of men and women who will sit for the bar exam this month are no doubt wishing they didn’t have to take the test. I wish they didn’t have to either; there should be no bar exam because such a test presupposes the validity of an authoritative entity to administer it. There is nothing magical about the practice of law; all who are capable of doing it ought to have a chance to do it. That will never happen, of course, if bar associations continue to maintain total control of the legal profession. Perhaps it’s not just the exam that should go.

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Abolish the Bar Exam

In America, American History, Arts & Letters, History, Humanities, Law, Legal Education & Pedagogy, Nineteenth-Century America on July 10, 2013 at 8:45 am

Allen Mendenhall

This article originally appeared here at LewRockwell.com.

Every year in July, thousands of anxious men and women, in different states across America, take a bar exam in hopes that they will become licensed attorneys. Having memorized hundreds if not thousands of rules and counter-rules — also known as black letter law — these men and women come to the exam equipped with their pens, laptops, and government-issued forms of identification. Nothing is more remote from their minds than that the ideological currents that brought about this horrifying ritual were fundamentally statist and unquestionably bad for the American economy.

The bar exam is a barrier to entry, as are all forms of professional licensure. Today the federal government regulates thousands of occupations and excludes millions of capable workers from the workforce by means of expensive tests and certifications; likewise various state governments restrict upward mobility and economic progress by mandating that workers obtain costly degrees and undergo routinized assessments that have little to do with the practical, everyday dealings of the professional world.

As a practicing attorney, I can say with confidence that many paralegals I know can do the job of an attorney better than some attorneys, and that is because the practice of law is perfected not by abstract education but lived experience.

So why does our society require bar exams that bear little relation to the ability of a person to understand legal technicalities, manage case loads, and satisfy clients? The answer harkens back to the Progressive Era when elites used government strings and influence to prevent hardworking and entrepreneurial individuals from climbing the social ladder.

Lawyers were part of two important groups that Murray Rothbard blamed for spreading statism during the Progressive Era: the first was “a growing legion of educated (and often overeducated) intellectuals, technocrats, and the ‘helping professions’ who sought power, prestige, subsidies, contracts, cushy jobs from the welfare state, and restrictions of entry into their field via forms of licensing,” and the second was “groups of businessmen who, after failing to achieve monopoly power on the free market, turned to government — local, state, and federal — to gain it for them.”

The bar exam was merely one aspect of the growth of the legal system and its concomitant centralization in the early twentieth century. Bar associations began cropping up in the 1870s, but they were, at first, more like professional societies than state-sponsored machines. By 1900, all of that changed, and bar associations became a fraternity of elites opposed to any economic development that might threaten their social status.

The elites who formed the American Bar Association (ABA), concerned that smart and savvy yet poor and entrepreneurial men might gain control of the legal system, sought to establish a monopoly on the field by forbidding advertising, regulating the “unauthorized” practice of law, restricting legal fees to a designated minimum or maximum, and scaling back contingency fees. The elitist progressives pushing these reforms also forbade qualified women from joining their ranks.

The American Bar Association was far from the only body of elites generating this trend. State bars began to rise and spread, but only small percentages of lawyers in any given state were members. The elites were reaching to squeeze some justification out of their blatant discrimination and to strike a delicate balance between exclusivity on the one hand, and an appearance of propriety on the other. They made short shrift of the American Dream and began to require expensive degrees and education as a prerequisite for bar admission. It was at this time that American law schools proliferated and the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) was created to evaluate the quality of new law schools as well as to hold them to uniform standards.

At one time lawyers learned on the job; now law schools were tasked with training new lawyers, but the result was that lawyers’ real training was merely delayed until the date they could practice, and aspiring attorneys had to be wealthy enough to afford this delay if they wanted to practice at all.

Entrepreneurial forces attempted to fight back by establishing night schools to ensure a more competitive market, but the various bar associations, backed by the power of the government, simply dictated that law school was not enough: one had to first earn a college degree before entering law school if one were to be admitted to practice. Then two degrees were not enough: one had to pass a restructured, formalized bar exam as well.

Bar exams have been around in America since the eighteenth century, but before the twentieth century they were relaxed and informal and could have been as simple as interviewing with a judge. At the zenith of the Progressive Era, however, they had become an exclusive licensing agency for the government. It is not surprising that at this time bar associations became, in some respects, as powerful as the states themselves. That’s because bar associations were seen, as they are still seen today, as agents and instrumentalities of the state, despite that their members were not, and are not, elected by the so-called public.

In our present era, hardly anyone thinks twice of the magnificent powers exercised and enjoyed by state bar associations, which are unquestionably the most unquestioned monopolies in American history. What other profession than law can claim to be entirely self-regulated? What other profession than law can go to such lengths to exclude new membership and to regulate the industry standards of other professions?

Bar associations remain, on the whole, as progressive today as they were at their inception. Their calls for pro bono work and their bias against creditors’ attorneys, to name just two examples, are wittingly or unwittingly part of a greater movement to consolidate state power and to spread ideologies that increase dependence upon the state and “the public welfare.” It is rare indeed to find the rhetoric of personal responsibility or accountability in a bar journal. Instead, lawyers are reminded of their privileged and dignified station in life, and of their unique position in relation to “members of the public.”

The thousands of men and women who will sit for the bar exam this month are no doubt wishing they didn’t have to take the test. I wish they didn’t have to either; there should be no bar exam because such a test presupposes the validity of an authoritative entity to administer it. There is nothing magical about the practice of law; all who are capable of doing it ought to have a chance to do it. That will never happen, of course, if bar associations continue to maintain total control of the legal profession. Perhaps it’s not just the exam that should go.

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