Warren E. Burger (1907 – 1995)
Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986.
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For some disputes, trials will be the only means, but for many claims, trial by adversarial contest must go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood. Our system is too costly, too painful, too destructive, too inefficient for a truly civilized people.
History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the commonsense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.
The policeman on the beat or in the patrol car makes more decisions and exercises broader discretion affecting the daily likes of people every day and to a greater extent, in many respects, than a judge will ordinarily exercise in a week.
The entire legal profession - lawyers, judges, law teachers - has become so mesmerized with the stimulation of the courtroom contest that we tend to forget that we ought to be healers - healers of conflicts. Doctors, in spite of astronomical medical costs, still retain a high degree of public confidence, because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors? Healers, not procurers? Healers, not hired guns?
No matter what coercive powers of enforcement governments may assert, the peoples in country after country in all ages have demonstrated that Man was meant to be free but that this ideal can be realized only under the rule of law. And this must be a rule that places restraints on individuals and on governments alike. This is a delicate, a fragile, balance to maintain. It is fragile because it is sustained only by an ideal that requires each person in society, by an exercise of free will, to accept and abide the restraints of a structure of laws.
We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians. No other profession is as casual or heedless of reality as ours
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