Legal community to celebrate Law Day

When the American Bar Association last month announced the theme for this year’s Law Day, Orlando Lucero, the 2022 Law Day Chairman, said the ABA “tried to create a statement that embodied the times in which we live and that was dynamic.”

“Toward a more perfect union: The Constitution in times of change” is the theme for this year’s Law Day, which is Sunday, May 1.

The theme focuses on a key phrase in the preamble to the United States Constitution:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

“The word ‘toward,’ at the beginning of the theme, was quite intended,” said Lucero, an attorney in Albuquerque, N.M.

“The word itself suggests movement, not stasis. It suggests that we have an opportunity to continue to move forward to a place that is more perfect than what it is now,” he said during the virtual launch of this year’s program.

The ABA wants to emphasize that the Constitution is a dynamic document that outlines a blueprint for government.

“It is neither perfect, nor exhaustive, as our nation’s history makes clear. Legislation, court rulings, amendments, lawyers, and ‘we the people’ have built upon those original words across generations to attempt to make the ‘more perfect Union’ more real,” ABA officials wrote in their announcement.

Lucero said ABA officials are hoping that the theme “shows that the Constitution is a resilient document that will continue to have power and vitality even as our country changes.”

“While on some days I feel pessimistic, I nonetheless believe that the Constitution affords our country and its citizens the best path forward, and in our current polarizing times we all need to rally around the Constitution precisely because it is what we need to help us navigate the significant and many challenges that we face,” Lucero said.

James A. Gardner, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law, said the ABA’s choice of theme is timely and appropriate.

“The rule of law is under attack, it was certainly during the Trump administration, and it still is with that group in opposition,” Gardner said.

The Constitution is under threat “because one of the two major political parties doesn’t respect it and doesn’t appear to have retained its historical commitment to respect the constitution,” Gardner said.

“The Constitution is the guiding document for a society and the guidance that it provides should lead in the direction that the society wants to go,” he said.

“The tipping point is when people stop caring about the Constitution and stop treating it as the document that establishes binding law, which must be obeyed, and they ignore it,” he said.

It’s not just a formal disrespect for the Constitution, but a rejection of informal norms and behavioral constraints that can chip away at the respect for the Constitution, he said.

The theme itself will likely be interpreted differently depending on where an individual stands on the political spectrum, Gardner said.

“When political progressives think about making a more perfect union, I assume they think about holding the United States to its own aspirations toward equality and humanity, dignity and prosperity, for all,” he said.

“And when populists on the Trumpian right think about a more perfect union I think they think probably about excluding people at the borders, and maybe sending some other people who are here back to where they came from, and going back to 1950s or 1850s social mores,” he said.

James R. Bowers, political science professor at St. John Fisher College in Pittsford, said the framers of the Constitution had a very clear understanding of what a more perfect union was.

“And that was a union that functioned to secure and protect peoples’ liberty, singular word,” he said.

“The Constitution is not a changing document. The times change, but the Constitution is flexible enough to allow for government to respond in ways to better secure liberty as times change and as society becomes more aware of just how vast individual liberty is,” he said.

“Toward a more perfect union means toward a greater presumption of liberty. … That requires us to know what the framers meant liberty to be, and I’m not convinced that the legal community and politicians understand what the framers meant by liberty today,” Bowers said.

The principles of liberty are universal even though they were imperfectly applied, Bowers said. But over the years steps have been taken, such as various amendments and the abolition of slavery, and giving women the right to vote, to move “toward a more perfect union,” he said.

Bradley P. Kammholz, president of the Monroe County Bar Association, said that, to him, a more perfect union “is one where we don’t vilify one another for our political opinions.”

“I clearly think the question is relevant to today, our times, because we’re in a state where we’re so polarized because we don’t really listen to one another. We instead mock and scream over folks who have different opinions from us,” Kammholz said.

There will always be people who view the Constitution as strict constructionists and others who look to interpret the Constitution, Kammholz said.

“Why can’t we have two different political sides, or multiple political sides, with calm discourse instead of tearing each other apart?” he said.

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