REVIEWS
| Date | 01 November 1965 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1965.tb02797.x |
| Published date | 01 November 1965 |
REVIEWS
THE
PERSONALITY
OF
LAWYERS.
A
Comparative Study
of
Subjec-
tive Factors in Law, Based on Interviews with German
Lawyers. By WALTER
0.
WEYRAUCH. With
a
Foreword by
HAROLD
D.
LASSWELL and
MYRES
S.
MCDOUGAL.
[New Haven
and London: Yale University
Press.
1964.
xv and
316
pp.]
LAWYEIIS, no doubt, have many personal characteristics in common. Some
may be acquired: one can hardly exercise the same profession throughout
one's life without adopting at least to some extent common views and common
traits. Others are, no doubt, original
:
men who choose the same profession
might have soiriething in comiiion. To have posed the question what these
common Characteristics
of
lawyers are and to have made an effort at answer-
ing it is ~ncritorious, even
if
the
siiiii
total of all these characteristics cannot
fairly be described as the lawyer's
"
personality." He is of
German extraction, served in the German army during the war, studied law
and began practising
as
an attorney in the courts of Frankfurt on Main.
In
1952
he emigrated to' the United States, where he started again as a
student. In
a
few years he graduated and became
a
lecturer in law at the
University of Florida, where he now serves as Professor. Already in his
early years he had taken a strong interest in questions of psychology and
sociology. His present
book,
based on the experiences of a year of study in
Gerniany, spent there after he had become an American Professor
of
Law,
is the result of both his personal experiences and his studies in German and
American law, as well as in psychology and sociology.
Books, in the learned author's view, are an insufficient guide to the
personal characteristics of lawyers on the ground that their authors are
writing with a view to the public and are prevented from really pouring
out their hearts by the necessity of sparing colleagues and superiors and by
the fear of repercussions for theniselves and their careers. The basis
of
the present book are therefore not studies in libraries, but intervicws with
sixty-three lawyers in all walks of life-judges, attorneys, professors of law,
soiiie of them men leading in their profession, many
or
most in the middle
strata and even some whom the author describes as men of bad repute. Most
of
the
"
subjects
"
were approached through the author's personal acquain-
tance with them. The majority are clearly from Frankfurt on Main. In
some cases some local knowledge may enable the reader to recognise who
the anonymous speakers are whose views-sometimes wise
or
shrewd, in
others far less so-the author reproduces. The
"
subjects
"
were
asked for their views on legal education, legal examinations, training in the
profession, the profession itself, their colleagues, elders, superiors and inferiors,
the legal system which they serve, but also on more personal topics, such as
their goal in life, their desires to achieve wealth, fame, social rank, security
and also
a
participation in the power processes that govern society. The
mental health of lawyers, too, including their tendency towards hypochondria
and their sexual behaviour, fornis the subject-matter of a special chapter.
Politics are, of course, also not forgotten. The author's subjects made some
surprising statements in this field, as,
e.g.,
one who described Germany as a
''
country of army sergeants
"
and another said to be a
"
practising lawyer
of the top elite, a
'
conservative nationalist
'
"
whose disappointment with
729
The author of the present book has
a
remarkable life history.
The topics of these interviews range far and wide.
VOL.
28
25,
780
THE
MODERN LAW REVIEW
VOL.
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present-day developments is such that he would
“
not feel too sorry to kick
the
bucket-”
Every chapter contains in addition to the “subjects’” view an evaluation
by
the
author. These evaluations are, no doubt, the weakest part of the work.
Comparisons with American conditions are marred by
the
fact that the
author has never been in active practice in the
U.S.A.
and had to base his
opinions on indirect sources, such
as
personal contacts and the study of law
review articles. His comments on German conditions are always shrewd and
never too far
off
the mark, but his contacts with the German literature are
erratic and one often feels that he has not really exhausted the topic.
The overall picture which emerges is certainly not flattering to the
German legal profession. The dustcover of the book shows
a
shortsighted
hunchback staring intently, but seemingly with very limited understanding,
at
a
pair of scales. This represents correctly the result of the author’s
research. The German legal profession, according
to
him, shows
‘‘
detachment
from common experiences, eccentricity, claims of having access to some
higher truth, repetitiveness, egocentricity
”
and-last but not least-“ self-
destructive urges culminating in self-mutilation and withdrawal into blindness
or
self-deception” (p.
276).
We are assured by the author that he feels no
basic differences
in
most of these characteristics between the American and
the
German profession. Moreover, with disarming frankness the learned
author admits to having discovered by introspection
a
great deal of these
deplorable characteristics in himself. But it
is
perhaps little comfort for one
who is
so
greatly afflicted to hear that others are in the same predicament.
Is
all
this correct? There can be little doubt that
a
good
deal of
it
may
very well be true. The author is too well-informed and too assiduous in his
observations
as
to be able to go completely wrong in his assessments. But
the picture that he has drawn is to some extent clearly distorted because
of the methodological errors which he has committed. Already his starting
point must be contested.
It
is
simply not right
to
say that the “personality
of lawyers” cannot be judged from their printed works.
It
is,
of course,
true that Germany does not possess
so
large and representative
a
collection
of legal biographies and autobiographies
as
do England and the U.S.A.
It
is
also true that such works are not always a reliable source. But there are other
avenues
to
information which the learned author has completely neglected.
His most grievous omission
is
perhaps his failure to take notice of the works
of
Max
Rwmpf,
who, if anyone, can claim to have been the German pioneer
in
the
field of sociology applied to the legal profession.
Rmpf
had already noted
the outstanding importance of rules of etiquette and of the numerous
published decisions of the
“Courts
of Professional Etiquette” for any
balanced view of
the
achievements and the failings of the legal profession.
The massive material here available has been completely overlooked by the
author.
So
have such works as
Bssdt’s
book on the German judiciary, the
writings of
Walter Rode,
M.
Hkachfeld
and those of outside observers such
as
Sling
and
Yostar.
To
say that libraries
do
not give sufficient clues to
the character of the lawyer means in effect
to
disregard in the assessment
of the profession its entire work. Bench and Bar may and, no doubt, are
often
guilty
of disguising their true feelings behind
a
smoke screen. But
is it not the task of
a
psychologist
to
pierce such
a
screen? And, in fact,
has it not often been pierced-even by mere lawyers-the gap disclosing some
surprising and sometimes pretty unpalatable facts? Legal history, too,
is
a
more fruitful avenue than the author would seem inclined to admit. His
subjects have some interesting things
to
say about the period of Nazism
and its aftermath. But one wonders whether
a
trained legal historian
investigating,
e.g.,
the sorry history of the treatment of crimes againat
humanity by the German courts since
1949,
or
that
of nacification, denazifica-
tion, renazification and the resistance
to
it, would not be able to arrive
at
nome far more definitive conclusions and
to
cover
an
even wider field
than
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