ORBITER DICTA: OPINIONS, JUDICIOUS AND OTHERWISE, ON LAWYERS AND THE LAW.
By Joseph W.Bishop Jr. '36. New York: Atheneum,1971. 298 pp. $8.95.
When the way a writer says it compels attention to what he has to say, it seems obligatory to display a few run-of-the-mill samples of the merchandise offered.
Kunstler's speeches are by and large neither better nor worse than the average of New Left polemics, but they are delivered con brio and fortissimo, with a maximum of emotion almost unadulterated by fact or logic. As a long-time fellow townsman of the Reverend William Sloan Coffin, Jr., I am something of a connoisseur of fustian, as a citizen of Rheims is something of a connoisseur of champagne. New Haven is the very home of it. Kunstler's is almost a greater vintage than Coffin's. But Coffin, after all, is a clergyman and I, being a lawyer, hope for something different from lawyers. The effect which Kunstler's jeremiads produce on me is such that if he were to attack veneral disease, I would find myself examining the case for gonorrhea.
In the line of duty, I have tackled some of the opera of the principal philosopher of the Movement, the dector angelicus, Professor Herbert Marcuse, but with indifferent success. As a lawyer, I have had some practice in deciphering impenetrable prose, but Marcuse beats anything in my experience. ... Because Marcuse does come as close as anyone to providing such philosophical underpinnings as the radical left has, including its rejection of the Bill of Rights and the rest of the bourgeois-democratic system of criminal justice, it may be relevant to examine his beliefs. Despite the peculiarities of his style, it is sometimes possible for a tough and determined reader to perceive what he is struggling to say. Here and there a sentence which is almost comprehensible catches the eye, like an only ordinarily plain woman at a D.A.R. convention.
[Chief Justice] Taft's opinion has been ascribed to zeal in the cause of Prohibition. Although it is difficult to believe that one who had been a professor of law at Yale shared the morality of the Anti-Saloon League and the Methodist Board of Temperance and Morals (and equally difficult to believe that he achieved his girth and complexion without the help of malt or vinous liquors) the tone of the opinion does suggest that he disliked bootleggers.
If the foregoing induces a nostalgic reverie and you pine for the days, more than forty years ago, when you awaited with eager anticipation the words of the Sage of Baltimore in the next issue of The AmericanMercury; or if, through lack of seniority, you were denied that almost sensuous pleasure but are looking for a commentator with a masterly command of the language who (as Mencken said of himself) is strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency, this book will be of help.
After an early law career in the Army, the Solicitor General's office, and Wall Street, Mr. Bishop has been a professor of the Yale Law School since 1957.
His book is a collection of essays previously published, principally under the guise of book reviews, in such diverse periodicals as the Yale Law Journal,Harpers, The New York Times Magazine, and Esquire. They are really not reviews of books but rather Professor Bishop's ideas about the subject matter of the books or their authors, such as: Earl Warren's Supreme Court; invasion of privacy; treatment of criminals; trial by jury; the Spock- Coffin trial; law and psychiatry; electronic eavesdropping; military justice; Melvin Belli; Thurmond Arnold; Justice Douglas; Vance Packard; and Jessica Mitford.
If the shrill shouts of the New Barbarians or the fulminations of the Old Windbags have got you down or up tight, do not despair. There is balm in Gilead, for the mantle of Henry L. Mencken has been cast upon the capable shoulders of Joseph W. Bishop Jr.
Mr. Loeb, a retired New York lawyer andformer resident of Stamford, now lives on ahill above Norwich, Vermont.
