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Lowering the Bar : Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture / Marc Galanter

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Lowering the Bar : Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture / Marc Galanter Lowering Anonymous Fund for the Humanities of the –. Lowering Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture The University of Wisconsin Press Monroe Street Madison, Wisconsin www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/ Henrietta Street London WCE LU, England Copyright © The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Galanter, Marc, – Lowering the bar : lawyer jokes and legal culture / Marc Galanter. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN --- (cloth : alk. paper) . Lawyers—United States—Humor. Lawyers—United States—Public opinion. Lawyers–Complaints against–United States. I. Title. K.G ´.´—dc for (–) friend and teacher Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from all men. — : Illustrations xiii Acknowledgments xv Introduction The Enlargement and Withdrawal of the Legal World Learning from Lawyer Jokes : The Enduring Core and Its Recent Accretions . Lies and Stratagems: The Corruption of Discourse Lying and Dishonesty Workers in the Mills of Deceit Eloquence, Persuasiveness, Resourcefulness Hot Air: Lawyer Talk as Fakery and Bombast Masters of Stratagem The Lawyer Outsmarted The Ascendency of Lawyer Talk . The Lawyer as Economic Predator Only the Lawyer Wins Taking It All A Prodigious Predator Fee Simple Throwing the Meter Sexploitation: Predation as Sex / Sex as Predation The Justice Tariff . Playmates of the Devil The Devil’s Own Headed for Hell x Contents Absent in Heaven A Kingdom of This World .Conflict: Lawyers as Fomenters of Strife Excess and Insufficient Combativeness Promoters of Conflict The Conniving Claimant Litigation Fever The Lawyer as Heroic Champion . The Demography of the World of Lawyer Jokes The Hemispheric Prism Women in Combat Jews and Other Outsiders Seniors and Juniors : The New Territories . Betrayers of Trust Lawyers in a World of Declining Trust The Betrayal Joke Cluster Betrayal as Virtue What Do the Jokes Tell Us? An Excess of Loyalty? . The Lawyer as Morally Deficient A Suspect Profession Looking Out for Number One No Redeeming Social Value “He Just Doesn’t Get It” In the Laboratory . Lawyers as Objects of Scorn Closing the Circle of Scorn Sounding the Depths Into the Slime The Anal Connection The Uses of Scorn . “A Good Start!” Death Wish Jokes Prehistory The Contemporary Onslaught Let’s Kill All the Lawyers A Pestilential Affliction The Percent Legend Why Death Wish Jokes Flourish Contents xi : The Justice Implosion . Enemies of Justice Doing Justice The Lawyer as Enemy of Justice What Does Law Deliver? . Only in America? Appendix: Register of Jokes Notes References Index . Blessings of Brittain—or A Flight of Lawyers . Interesting. Have your lawyer call my lawyer. . There’s one thing about the law I always wanted know but was afraid to ask: Where in the hell do all the lawyer jokes come from? . The judicial rulings are over here. That section is all lawyer jokes. . A Counciller . I urge this jury not to let the evidence prejudice you against my client. . The Old Bailey Advocate Bringing Off a Thief . Sharpening the flats . Opting for Chinese food for lunch, the law partners decide in principle to share their dishes and, accordingly, before ordering, negotiate a comprehensive pre-victual agreement. . I’m certain I speak for the entire legal profession when I say that the fee is reasonable and just. . The shark image is domesticated by lawyers and turned into an ironic icon of the trade. . Impressed? Well, wait until I tell you about this next case. . If we were lawyers this would be billable time. . Tombstone: Jack Roe, esq. , billable hours. . The Lawyer Winding Up His Accounts . Symptoms of Crim Con!! . Why is everybody always picking on us? . A Lawyer and His Agent . The Lawyer’s last Circuit . Can I see that National Law Journal when you’re through with it? . Just a minute! I happen to be a lawyer . . A Cheap Beating xiii xiv Illustrations . The Learned A___s or a legal Construction of Rogues and Vagrants . Our case is up next. By the way, you look great! . Litigation . A Flat between Two Sharps . When will I be old enough to start suing people? . Nervous, Doctor? Never treated a personal injury lawyer before? . I don’t feel quite as fulfilled when I’ve saved a lawyer. . My lawyer finally got me on the endangered-species list! . So you went to law school, and now you want to practice law. I think that’s cute. . For God’s sake, Mildred, you’re a lawyer, not a lawyerette! . Do you know Kimberley, my attorney? . Lawyer and Client . Councellor Double-Fee . The Triple Plea . The Triple Plea . St Dunstan Triumphant or the Big Wigs Defeated . Stop making such a case out of it! A lot of young lawyers kick their fathers out of their law firms! . Laboratory Rats . Solicitor Waiting for a Client . Villagers Shooting out their Rubbish!!! . Boss’s Lawyers .I am a member of the legal profession, but I’m not a lawyer in the pejorative sense. . There was ‘reasonable doubt,’ Ma’am, so we’re hanging a few lawyers. . The men are excited about getting to shoot a lawyer. . Where the Carcase is, there will the Birds of Prey be gatherd together. . Law (as accordion) . What are you—some kind of a justice freak? . From “Pigmy Revels” . You have a pretty good case, Mr. Pitkin. How much justice can you afford? a. Blind Justice b. Scales of Justice . Food Gas Lawyers—Next Exit . Would everyone check to see they have an attorney? I seem to have ended up with two. . The Policy of the Law! . Dum Vivo Thrivo (“Where I live, I thrive”) . Tout Pour Soi, Rien Pour Les Autres (“All for me, nothing for the others”) Jokes are an ambient medium filled with variation and surprise. Even to feign mas- tery over one province of the joke domain requires the support and guidance of a great network of informants. I am indebted to many people who shared jokes with me, led me to sources, helped me to decode them, and provided helpful feedback. Those I can identify are named below. Along with their anonymous counterparts, they merit total absolution from responsibility for any errors of fact or taste: Al Alshuler, Ann Althouse, Gordon Baldwin, Susan Bandes, Richard Bauman, Joel Berman, Bill Breslin, Bill Broder, Mia Cahill, Paul Campos, Jerome Carlin, Eliza- beth Chambliss, Simon Chapman, Ross Cheit, James Clapp, Carol Clover, Christie Davies, Robert Diamond, Alan Dundes (and his band of students), Julia Eckert, Lauren Edelman, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Howard Erlanger, Edgar Feige, Marvin Frankel, Clark Freshman, Lawrence M. Friedman, Eve Galanter, Rachel Galanter, Sarah Galanter, Seth Galanter, Ken S. Gallant, Nancy Glasberg, Jona Goldschmidt, Richard Gordon, Robert Gordon, Marigay Graña, Gillian Hadfield, Lisa Harina- nan, John P. Heinz, Jack Heller, Lynne Henderson, Jan Hoem, Beth Hoffman, J. Gordon Hylton, Herbert Jacob, Richard Jacobson, Richard M. Jaeger, John Kidwell, Julian Killingley, J. T. Knight, Giselinde Kuipers, Jack Ladinsky, Paul Lermack, Lisa Lerman, Alan Lerner, John Leubsdorf, Jethro Lieberman, Laura Macaulay, Stewart Macaulay, Jane Mansbridge, Stephen M. Masterson, Brian McConnell, Roy M. Mersky, David Nelkin, Mark Osiel, Steve Piotrowski, Nancy Reichman, Ed Reisner, Alison Dundes Renteln, Paul Rheingold, Deborah Rhode, Len Riskin, Marlyn Robinson, Tom Russell, Michael Saks, Ted Schneyer, Philip G. Schrag, Marge Schultz, Ronen Shamir, Fred Shapiro, Amy Singer, Joan Sklaroff, Morton Sklaroff, Neil Smelser, Dan Stewart, Mark Suchman, Carol Tan, Joseph Thome, Elizabeth Thornberg, Edward Tiryakian, Gretchen Viney, Maria Volpe, Clifford Westfall, David B. Wilkins, George Wright, Deborah Wu. Transforming this abundant harvest into a book was made possible by many xv xvi Acknowledgments kinds of support. The library staff at the University of Wisconsin Law School—and especially Michael Morgalla—have been unfailingly helpful. The scope of my research was broadened by the opportunity to consult materials at the New York Public Library, the Schmulowitz Collection at the San Francisco Public Library, and the British Library. The Print Department of the British Museum was extraor- dinarily gracious in facilitating my search for visual counterparts to the textual material. In the captions to the illustrations in the text, the BM reference number identifies the location of that illustration in the Catalog of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. Much of the text was composed while I was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, a most congenial setting for research and reflection. I am grateful for the hospitality of the center and for the National Science Foundation’s Grant #SBR- that supported my stay there. The University of Wisconsin–Madison has provided generous support through the Evjue-Bascom Professorship and, most recently, the John and Rylla Bosshard Professorship at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Over the years, Lisa Harinanan, Allison Lynn, Aaron Stites, Angela Frozena, and Jennifer Grissom capably supplied indispensable research assistance. Brenda Balch, Collette Isachsen, and Theresa Dougherty grappled patiently and skillfully with numberless iterations of the manuscript. Earlier versions of several parts of the manuscript were delivered as the Robert S. Marx Lecture at the University of Cincinnati (“The Faces of Mistrust: The Image of Lawyers in Public Opinion, Jokes, and Political Discourse,” University of Cincinnati Law Review :– []), the Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy at DePaul University College of Law (“The Conniving Claimant: Changing Images of Misuse of Legal Remedies,” DePaul Law Review :– []), the Lansdowne Lecture at the University of Victoria (), and the Uri and Catherine Bauer Lecture at Cardozo Law School (“Changing Legal Consciousness in America: The View from the Joke Corpus,” Cardozo Law Review : – []). Another bit appeared as “Lawyers in the Laboratory: or, Can They Run through Those Little Mazes? Green Bag d : – ().
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