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During the impeachment process, President Clinton enjoyed strong support
in the polls; 70% thought he should remain in office. However, these
polls also showed that more than 70% of the people thought he did commit
perjury and obstruct justice. Pundits attribute this disconnect to the
strong economy which they say redounded to the President's benefit. No
doubt the economy did help, but is that the whole explanation?
The conflicting poll results, taken at face value, would indicate that
the people, looking at this situation, were saying "it's all probably
true but .... " But what? Since people judge things in light of their
own personal experience and apply their own sense of right and wrong;
the common experiences of most Americans with extramarital sex, perjury,
and the "manipulation" of judicial processes must be investigated.
Most adults in America have been a party to, or at least close to,
a divorce case, a child custody hearing, debt collection case, or some
other civil case. People have seen others lie under oath, people have
been coached by lawyers to color facts in certain ways, people have seen
results which were widely disparate from one case to another. In
criminal actions, particularly those involving nonviolent crimes, like
perjury, people have seen prosecutors selectively chose to prosecute one
case while ignoring others.
Turning to their lives outside of courtrooms - Citizens are asked
to sign their tax returns under a penalty of perjury. The government
demands this even though the tax code is thousands of pages in length
and confuses even experts. To require such an affirmation, in the face
of such complexity, forces people to downgrade the seriousness of oaths
and affirmations in other settings, including courtrooms. But problems
with the legal processes don't end with personal tax returns.
Americans, who manage business operations, find government
regulations are constantly changing and are too numerous to be
completely learned much less totally followed. They see regulators
vigorously enforce some rules in some situation while giving superficial
attention to other rules in other situations. These highly regulated,
law-abiding businessmen are confused by the volume of law and
regulation, the unending changes to these laws and regulations, the
selective enforcement, and the uncertain penalties. One compliance
officer at a small stock brokerage firm was heard to say to a newly
arrived government auditor "Although we have tried, I knew we haven't
followed all the rules faithfully. There are just to many rules and they
change too often for us to keep up. But we try to treat out clients
fairly. I know you will find violations. So all I can say is - this
firm's future is in your hands. I hope you will allow us to continue
operating." This confusion toward laws, regulations, and
enforcement processes has been exacerbated by regulatory, legislative,
and judicial attacks on traditions, rituals, and even the sacred. The
tradition of posting the Ten Commandments and saying morning prayers in
our schools was overruled by judicial decree. The biblical injunction
that divorce could only be granted for certain terrible sins, like
adultery, has been replaced with "no fault" divorce. Solemn vows and
oaths taken before God in a Church can now be overruled by a local judge
who can terminate a marriage simply because a husband or wife has lost
interest in the marriage. When someone like Judge Ken
Starr makes an eloquent plea that no man is above the law or that the
rule of law must be applied to all men equally, the America people have
to be forgiven for replying with a "shrug" or a "yawn" or even a "Bronx
cheer". Their personal experience is no where near the standard that
Judge Starr articulates so well.
So what steps must be taken to restore respect for the laws,
regulations, and legal processes. It is easy to rattle off a list:
reduce the number of laws and regulations, stop making so many changes
to these laws and regulation, even out enforcement, make the laws
compatible with religious values, etc. However, such lists are mere wish
lists until opposition groups are identified and neutralized.
In this situation the critical question is "what groups in
society increase their power and wealth from a proliferation of ‘ever
changing' laws and regulations that spawn lawsuits and/or regulatory
enforcement actions?" Did someone say judges, government regulators, and
lawyers? Has the opposition to reform been identified? What is the next
step? ...... Sorry, answers to such momentous questions are beyond the
scope of this essay; however, there is now a clearer understanding of
the disconnection within Pres. Clinton's poll numbers.
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Legal Ethics and Reform