IN WAR, THE MOST POWERFUL ARMY does not always win. I think of the American Revolution, the British soldiers, prettily uniformed, well trained, fully armed, the British controlling the seas and the ports, the rebels a rag-tag army of poorly trained recruits who shot at the enemy from behind trees and refused to take on the British regulars according to the then-existing rules of engagement. Power is often useless.
The United States had superior power in Vietnam but did not win the war, and our current wars call into question the power of power. How often I have walked into a courtroom where the opposing corporation was represented by a host of lawyers and assistants who dragged in imposing boxes of evidence and the most modern demonstrative equipment. They put on a show and overwhelmed the judge with endless motions, all of which were thickly briefed. But they did not win.
Endemic in power are its own limitations. Power tends to become bureaucratized. Often the right hand of power is a stranger to its left. Bureaucrats have their own power structure to struggle against, and they have each other to kick around and blame. Often they cannot make timely decisions, and those they make are sometimes made without a full understanding of the issues. Frequently a light brigade—special forces, as it were—can move in and take over while the main army is still trying to figure out what to do.
In a large personal injury case we see how the decisions come down from the insurance company that must finally pay the judgment. The case will be monitored by a member of the legal staff in the home office who in turn has no authority on his own and who must go to his supervisor. Often in large cases, the supervisor himself must get authority from higher-ups. And the lawyer representing the insurance company must make decisions based on the authority that is handed down from those bureaucratic sources. In his own firm, the same lawyer is burdened with the advice of a whole cadre of sycophants who may or may not be able to provide him with a full grasp of the case. Power often gets in the way of itself.
But in the courtroom there is no mob to fight. Only one lawyer at a time is permitted to speak. So, too, in the public meeting, in the boardroom, or the boss’s office. The overwhelming power the opponent brings against us is suddenly reduced to a one-on-one engagement, and we, who no longer give our permission to be defeated, can win.
Besides, power is often without a human heart. In the courtroom the lack of simple compassion is routinely reflected in the decisions that the corporate attorneys make. One sees an overlay of cold calculation despite the corporation’s attempt at feigning compassion. One cannot long pretend caring. And it is impossible to make a jury or anyone else care when we do not care. We remember: Caring is contagious.
We also remember that the American juror usually favors the underdog. A gross display of power on one side attracts a leveling attitude on the part of the jurors. Many times, and for obvious reasons, I have gone to court alone to face a bevy of powerhouse lawyers on the other side. If I have a choice between putting together a team, one consisting of a half-dozen lawyers with all of their specialties and expertise on the one hand, or just me (and the jury)—in the end I may be on the winning team.
Humanizing the power person. We are ants, all worker ants, until we need a queen. Then we feed the poor bug some special queen concoction and be hold—a queen is born to whom we all bow and scrape and quake in the face of her power. We see a haberdasher or the owner of a baseball team and we put the cloak of the presidency on him, and we give him the power to destroy whole cities and conquer entire nations and we bow and curtsy and struggle for a glimpse of the great man. We take a simple carpenter and call him the son of God, and with such power he changes history. We take an ordinary lawyer, slip a black robe on him and call him your honor and catch our breath as we argue before him, this man of all wisdom who could barely find his way to the courthouse before his ascension.
We see the glorious fool who has inherited millions and we adore him, find him beautiful, wise, and even funny, because he has been anointed to a high place on account of his money and the power of it. Yet he is still but a fool—albeit a rich one. Movie stars are adored, even worshipped, especially if they die young. Although it is true that men can rise to the occasion and become great, by and large our modernday deities, major and minor, take their high places only because we put them there.
On the other hand, the greatest examples of the species may remain anonymous. I am rarely impressed with the so-called greats, the politicians, the judges, the movie stars. The truly great people of this world are rarely recognized—the mother who raises seven children by herself and sees to their education, the teacher who through her inspiration and love creates many contributing members of our society, or the poet who refuses to climb the commercial ladder and writes great poems which few will read. If we ponder who we make into our heroes we’ll soon realize we are in sore need of genuine heroes. If we look carefully at those we respect, we will often find that our respect is poorly placed. Why do we respect many of the rich whose principal trait is greed? Why do we respect the movie star who has had a half dozen wives and whose narcissism has transformed him into a self-anointed fop? Why do we worship those whose power was purchased at the polls with corporate dollars? Why do we bow to judges who wear the robe of justice that covers unjust hearts?
When I walk into the courtroom and see his honor take the stand I am stricken with awe. He takes his high place on the bench and looks down on us. He has more power over me and my client than the president of the United States. He can make rulings that will forever change lives. In the courtroom he is omnipotent. I cannot strike out at him if he is a tyrant. I cannot criticize him if he is a buffoon. Yet, yesterday he may have been a lawyer with little talent and an empty fund of wisdom, but who contributed to the right political party. Why am I stricken with such awe and fear of this person?
When we invade the sacred premises of any who have power over us, the boss, the school board members, the county commissioners, all former ordinary citizens, why are we suddenly afraid to speak out? When we go before the city council why do we sometimes find ourselves nearly speechless?
The answer, of course, is that those who hold positions of power hold them because we, like the ants creating their own queen, have given them our power. If we begin to realize that their greatness is only our state of mind we will have taken the first large leap toward overcoming our fear of the power person.
All power persons are mere mortals, many of whom are dreadfully afraid of us. Some are marginally bright enough to recognize that we are the source of their power, that we can retract their power as quickly as it has been given. The politician fears us. The corporate executive fears us. We may expose him and dethrone him. The judge knows that his power is ephemeral—that the voters can cast him out into the horrors of becoming a regular citizen again, one who must once more crane his neck looking up to some other judge.
Those judges who have been appointed for life are the new kings in a democracy, and some are the worst of tyrants. But other than the fact that most of them live approximately forever, thriving, as they must, on the misery they decree on the hapless, they are still human. They fight traffic to and from work, their wives complain that they snore, they harbor their own set of neurotic quirks, and, as we, they fight protruding bellies, grow old, die, and are soon forgotten.
To those who suffer little caring for the human species, power is attractive, compelling. Bullies want power. Dictators and tyrants, the lowest form of the species, are addicted to power. I know men (and women) who, if given the power, would change the color of the moon to match their evening wear. And those who love power, who love it to the marrow, are those to whom power should never be entrusted. The ancient Chinese held that men who seek power should be denied it because they are dangerous to themselves and to others (which is the current measure by which we incarcerate people as mentally ill). Power is a devilish drug and should be outlawed for all except those who refuse to exercise it. But as we have seen, the power that others wield over us is only the power we have given them. They hold power over us and become power persons only because we have given them our power.
In the hands of politicians power is usually a desperate clutching to office. In the hands of the cruel judge power becomes a self-christened, deistic vision of himself, one touched by heaven to bring down the wrath of God upon the miserable creatures who appear before him and their evil representatives, their lawyers. Some people experience power as a sort of psychic aphrodisiac. They are usually the weakest, the most afraid, the cowards who become spunkless milksops the moment they are divested of power. The most powerful of all are those who refuse to use it. Love is, in fact, the ultimate power and the only legitimate power. All other manifestations of power are without legitimacy.
When I walk into a courtroom I see the judge for who he is—an ordinary man with extraordinary power. But he is my judge and he belongs to me—to serve my case, my cause, with sound and just rulings. I give him the presumption of decency. But should he stray from this role and become one of those tyrants who sits up there like a maddened emperor, I may disrobe him. Without his clothing he is a disgusting sort. His skin is usually too white, bleached like a daisy that has been smothered under the manure pile. He will wear funny little pink pajamas tonight at bedtime, with patterns of little jumping teddy bears, and he’ll make some excuse to his wife for his bedtime failure, who, if the truth were known, is only too pleased that he has consigned himself to his own side of the bed. I do not create such a vision of the man out of disrespect for his office. But I have no intention of respecting an office held by a man who disrespects justice. Seeing him as he most likely is permits me to keep my power. It belongs to me and I do not intend to deliver it to him, which does not mean that I will disobey his orders, display my contempt, or otherwise misconduct myself. There is a profound difference between respecting a judge’s just rulings and enduring the unjust ones, as may be necessary to accomplish our goals in the case.
All I mean to say is that we must put those in power in their proper places. If they earn our respect it should be honestly given. Several judges have been my heroes. I dedicated one of my books to a judge. I have been befriended by those in power and given a boost along the way—particularly by parents and teachers who had power over me but who exercised it with love. I have known rich men who were truly great men. The exceptions are not what I’ve been talking about. If we must always get entangled in exceptions we can go nowhere with the overlying truth of any argument.
What I have said here can be simply put: Those in power retain their power because we give it to them or fail to reclaim it. Most in power hold on to it because they need it, indeed, because they are weak without it. Many who possess great power are ill or ill advised. That we should give them our power by becoming intimidated by theirs is to wrongly waste the power we have. For us, power, theirs and ours, belongs to us. We can give it or withhold it.
The battleground belongs to us. When we walk into a place of battle it is seldom one we know intimately. We do not wage these battles in our homes. We wage our battles in a strange environment—the courtroom, the boss’s office, the boardroom, or the chambers of some hearing examiner. These are places that are most often hard and stark, or by contrast, imposingly lavish. If we are in the lushly furnished boardroom, with its long walnut table and its cushy swivel chairs, we are also intimidated by the opulence that reminds all in attendance that we visit it only at the invitation of power.
When we walk into a courtroom we are immediately thrown into a hostile environment. I have never been in a courtroom that was furnished in such a way as to create a sense of comfort and safety. The bench, of course—the throne—sits up high so that power looks down on us. Behind power is usually the flag of the nation and state reminding us that the occupant of the throne is the duly appointed agent of the ultimate earthly power. The seats in the courtroom are often those hard pews that are little better than uncomfortable benches. Perhaps from the hallway outside the courtroom we hear weeping. Nothing alive grows in the courtroom. We see no plants, no goldfish in bowls, no dogs with wagging tails. We see instead the deputy sheriffs or marshals, their shiny badges of authority glittering in the bright lights, their guns seemingly ready to kill or maim at the slightest provocation. Our client may be brought in shackles. The lawyers whisper to each other in this frightening place, even before the judge enters and the court is called to order.
These are the premises of power. They are constructed to surround us with emotional high fences with psychic barbed wire around the top. Their function is to strip us of our power before the battle begins, because no one can exercise their own power from within the confines of a psychic penitentiary—not freely, not effectively. We realize we are not out in the gentle woods sitting on a log under a lovely spring sky. Instead we have been captured and imprisoned in this hostile place by the system from which we cannot escape unless we understand the false accouterments of power.
All battles should be conducted out of doors. Court should be held in the middle of a pretty pasture surrounded by old pine trees and a clear stream running through it. The arguments before the city council should be in the city park or on the beach. If we should suggest such a place for these wars we would be dismissed out of hand as one qualified for a house of jibberers. But we can at will go where we choose simply by willing it so.
Every courtroom I enter belongs to me. The judge and the opposing lawyers, indeed, the hostile witnesses, are my guests. I welcome them here. I cannot do battle without an opponent, and the battle cannot be fairly fought without a referee. Since the courtroom is mine I can furnish it as I wish. All of this may be only child’s play, but the power of the mind can either free us or imprison us. We will always fight a better fight if we refuse to be dragged into the dungeons of power. As the poet mused, “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.” In the end, the most anxious man in prison is the warden.