Conflict is at the heart of the law. As lawyers, we are students, practitioners, and aficionados of conflict. The premise of our work--the thesis of our profession--is that conflict should be resolved through reason, evidence, and rules, rather than through force. The better facts, better words, better arguments win the day.
Although sometimes honored in the breach, civility remains among the highest values we hold. We instill it in our codes and invoke it in our pleadings and opinions. Litigation is not war, and our opponents are not our enemies.
Not so, it seems, in politics, where civility is often denigrated as a form of weakness, disloyalty, lack of commitment--of a willingness to accept a corrupt and intolerable status quo or an existential threat from the other side. The rhetoric is martial, the imagined outcomes apocalyptic, the proposed remedies extreme.
Yesterday was a dark one for this country, as was January 6 and the others over the past few years marred by episodes of political violence--all of them direct assaults on the rule of law. Dark, but not entirely surprising. Although it is hard to feel optimism, I can at least hope that those who deride civility will consider where our current road leads, and give the concept another thought.
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