What Justice Looks Like This Morning
By Leslie Doyle
One of Shakespeare’s most misused lines is the oft-quoted “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Those who hate lawyers or just resent their hewing to the, you know, law, can always be counted on to drag that line out in some fashion, with a big haw haw, and an elbow in the side — “Hey, you know what Shakespeare said….” But of course, Shakespeare put those words in the mouth of Dick the Butcher, in Henry VI, Part 2, a follower of Jack Cade, whose aim was to sow discord and topple a lawful government. Shakespeare’s quote, as has been pointed out over the centuries over and over, is a compliment to lawyers, a nod to their standing as a bulwark against chaos and misrule.
I woke up this morning, the morning after the protest and triumph at JFK Airport, with that line in my head. Yesterday I’d followed the story of refugees and legal residents barred from leaving the airports around the country by Trump’s heartless and peremptory ban of travelers from a list of countries that are Muslim-majority, which swept up, among others: grandmothers here to visit their grandchildren, refugee families about to join their sponsors for a chance at a safe, peaceful new life, men who’d risked their lives working for the US Army who couldn’t stay in their home countries any more, and permanent residents who lived and worked in the US and had left for a conference or a trip to see family, or any of the million reasons people travel and assume they have the right to do so.
I was uplifted by the sight of the enormous, spontaneous crowds that gathered at the airports to protest this unjust ruling. My daughter was among them, and she sent back streams of pictures for us to share widely, of peaceful assembly, people organizing in the service of justice. This is the opposite of Jack Cade’s army of killers (in that same scene, a clerk is sent to be executed for the crime of being literate). I’m so proud of her and the thousands who stood up for the Constitution.
The other pictures that showed up over and over were of the lawyers, scores of them on the ground at every airport, working to help the individuals being detained. And in a court in Brooklyn, the lawyers of the ACLU argued for the release of the detainees… and ultimately won a small victory, that those here can’t be sent back to the countries they traveled from. The two being held at JFK were allowed to enter the country. At other airports, detainees remain in limbo. As I write this, Dulles officials are not letting those there meet with lawyers.
Because if your aim is to sow discord and topple the Constitution, then lawyers are the enemy.
Because if your aim is to pander to ignorance, then the crowds who refuse to follow your hate-filled demagoguery, but instead seek justice, are the enemy.
There will be many, many more battles like yesterday’s. So this morning, I salute the masses of citizens who gathered to support justice, not fear, and the lawyers who work to make that justice real.
