The Need for Law

U.S. intellectuals have often complained that America, wrenched by fear and suspicion, is at war with itself. Last week one intellectual tried to put things back into perspective. "From a casual glance at the contemporary scene," said Yale's President A. Whitney Griswold, "it might almost seem that we were again living in a house divided against itself and all but inundated by a lawless, anti-intellectual flood ... Is the picture too dark?" Griswold's answer: yes.

Compared to the dissensions of 1854, "our differences today are hot and superficial, like sunburn, not like a fever. The burning issue of 1854 was slavery. Its counterpart of 1954 is the Communist conspiracy. If we had been as united on the first as we are on the second, I dare say there would have been no Civil War. Never in the whole history of the United States, I think, have its people been so overwhelmingly and firmly united on anything as they are in their opposition to Communism." Far from being at war with each other, "we are profoundly . . . at peace."

Why, then, does the nation seem so divided? Partly, says Griswold, because of a "neurotic obsession" that has been fanned and exploited by opportunistic politicians. "The treatment of the obsession, it seems to me, is obvious. It is to meet the real part of it, the Communist conspiracy, with realistic plans for defense; and to cope with the other . . . parts of it with the age-old specifics for such troubles . . . the specifics of law and learning ....

"I think that law in the United States has suffered some retrogression of recent date ... I do not think that the full meaning and value of law are communicated to society through the law's own formal processes . . . To be effective, the rule of law must be comprehended by society, not as an esoteric concept, but as a working principle comparable to regular elections and the secret ballot; and the plain fact is that it is not so comprehended. This, I think, is an educational deficiency . .

"The American people do not sufficiently understand the rule of law be cause it has never been properly explained to them. The legal profession has not succeeded in explaining it perhaps because it has been too busy with ad hoc issues and winning cases. The teaching profes sion has not succeeded in explaining it per haps because it has not sensed its true importance. If the two great pillars of society, law and learning, are to stand, the professional representatives of each must come to the aid of the other . . ."

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