The Founding Fathers held nuanced and sometimes conflicting views on judges and the lawyer class. They valued an independent judiciary as essential to liberty and checks on power, while some expressed wariness toward lawyers as a professional group, seeing them as potentially self-interested or prone to creating an “artificial aristocracy.”
Views on Judges and the Judiciary
The Founders designed the judicial branch to be independent, drawing from experiences with British colonial courts where judges were dependent on the Crown (a grievance in the Declaration of Independence). They saw lifetime tenure (during “good behavior”) and salary protections in Article III as crucial to allow judges to uphold the Constitution impartially, even against popular or political pressure.
- Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 78, famously called the judiciary the “least dangerous” branch because it has “neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment.” He argued it needed independence to check legislative overreach and protect rights, serving as an “intermediate body between the people and the legislature.”
- John Adams emphasized judicial independence in the Massachusetts Constitution (1780), calling it essential to freedom alongside a free press.
- The overall consensus: Judges should be insulated from politics to ensure rule of law, not subject to elections or removal at whim.
Concerns About the Lawyer Class
Many Founders were lawyers themselves (over half the signers of the Declaration and Constitution), but some viewed the legal profession with suspicion, fearing it could foster elitism, endless litigation, or undue influence.
- Thomas Jefferson was particularly critical. He wrote that lawyers often formed an “artificial aristocracy” based on wealth and education rather than virtue or talent, warning it was “a mischievous ingredient in government.” He complained about Congress having too many lawyers (“one hundred and fifty lawyers… whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour”) and once lamented that America’s ancestors “were laborers, not lawyers.” Jefferson distrusted concentrated legal power, seeing lawyers as potentially obstructive or self-serving.
- Broader anti-lawyer sentiment existed in the era, rooted in populist distrust of educated elites who monopolized courts and government. Some worried lawyers could manipulate laws for personal gain or create a privileged class, echoing fears of “aristocracy” (Jefferson distinguished “natural aristocracy” of talent from “artificial” ones of birth/wealth/profession).
- However, not all shared this harshly: John Adams, a prominent lawyer, defended the profession and the right to counsel, while Hamilton saw trained lawyers as necessary for a complex system.
The Founders revered an independent judiciary as a bulwark of liberty but harbored agrarian/populist concerns about lawyers as a class potentially breeding elitism or corruption—views reflecting tensions between rule of law and democratic equality. These ideas influenced debates over judicial review and professional regulation.
Jefferson’s critique of lawyers
Thomas Jefferson, himself a trained and practicing lawyer for about eight years early in his career, held a deeply ambivalent view of the legal profession. While he valued legal knowledge and respected certain practitioners (like his mentor George Wythe), he frequently criticized lawyers as a class for fostering obstructionism, elitism, and an “artificial aristocracy” that threatened republican ideals.
Key Elements of Jefferson’s Critique
Jefferson distinguished between a “natural aristocracy” based on virtue and talent (which he supported) and an “artificial” one rooted in wealth, birth, or profession (which he opposed). He often included lawyers in the latter category, seeing them as self-serving, prone to excessive verbiage, and capable of manipulating systems for personal gain.
Major Quotes Illustrating His Views
- On lawyers in Congress (Autobiography, 1821): “If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.”
- On the profession’s tendencies (various letters): “It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour.”
- Natural vs. artificial aristocracy (Letter to John Adams, October 28, 1813): “There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents… There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class… The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society… May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to neutralize its effects.” (In context, Jefferson often linked lawyers, along with bankers and corporations, to this “artificial” class.)
- On the shift to Toryism among lawyers (Letter to James Madison, February 17, 1826): He lamented that after the Revolution, lawyers abandoned Coke’s whiggish principles for Blackstone’s more monarchical leanings: “you remember also that our lawyers were then all whigs. but when his black-letter text, and uncouth, but cunning learning got out of fashion, and the honied Mansfieldism of Blackstone became the Student’s Hornbook from that moment that profession (the nursery of our Congress) began to slide into toryism, and nearly all the young brood of lawyers now are of that hue.”
- On lawyers’ role in justice (Letter to John B. Colvin, September 20, 1810): Referring to delays and biases in the legal system: “the tardiness and weakness of the law, apathy of the judges, active patronage of the whole tribe of lawyers…”
Jefferson’s critiques reflected his agrarian republicanism and fear that professional elites (including lawyers) could undermine democratic equality and virtue. Despite this, he recognized the necessity of law and lawyers in a free society, and his own legal training profoundly shaped his political thought. His views were not uniform hatred but a populist suspicion of concentrated professional power.
The legitimate concerns of the founding fathers now seem prophetic…
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