the case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. Anatole France, the French short story writer, said that: "The law in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."
In American literature, these themes were reiterated with a vengeance. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac sardonically observed: "God works wonders now and then. Behold! a lawyer, an honest man." Brome in the late 19th century said: "The Law and the Lawyer have oftener been the subject of . . . ridicule on the stage than any other class or profession." In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables, Judge Pyncheon, a descendant of one of the accusers of the Salem witches, manipulates the law, "trampling on the weak." In Willa Cather's 1923 novel of frontier life, A Lost Lady, the lawyer, Ivy Peters, is a land-speculating, Indian-cheating, political schemer, who seduces an indigent widow and achieves dominance of a Colorado town through his unethical machinations. In Rex Beach's novel of the Klondike gold rush, The Spoilers, his lawyer character, Struve, is "a rake and gentlemanly adventurer," who uses his legal wiles to cheat gullible miners out of their gold claims. During the Depression of the 1930s, lawyers continue to be seen in novels as the protectors of the rich and powerful, such as the late George Apley, who helps prop up a decaying and bigoted Boston aristocracy and upholds the status quo against the immigrant Irish.
The Lawyer as the Servant of Society
Lawyers have always played an influential role in American life, perhaps more so than in any other country. Some, such as Abraham Lincoln, sought to project a positive image of the profession. In turning down a prospective client in the 1840s, Lincoln said: "some things legally right are not morally right."
Beginning in the early mid-19th century, legal reformers were at the forefront of efforts to ease the rigors of the common law thr...