Politicians, Lawyers As

In the United States, many elected officials have law degrees and many aspiring politicians use law school as a first step in their political careers. In most other parts of the world, this close connection between the legal profession and political careers is rarer. In fact, in addition to having more lawyers per capita than other countries, there are many more lawyer-politicians in the United States than elsewhere.

Since the founding of the United States, lawyers have played a key role in the U.S. political system. Of the fifty-two signers of the Declaration of Independence (1776), twenty-five were lawyers, and thirty-one of the fifty-five members of the Continental Congress were lawyers. Lawyers have also dominated many state legislatures throughout American history, as well as the state conventions created in order to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Lawyers also wrote and rewrote many of the state constitutions over time. For example, 103 of the 133 delegates at the 1872 Pennsylvania constitutional convention were lawyers. At the 1872–1874 Ohio constitutional convention, 62 of the 105 delegates were lawyers. Since around 1850, and still true today, roughly half of the nation's governors have been lawyers. One of the highest percentages of lawyers in the statehouses occurred in 1983 when 66 percent of the governors were lawyers. Many who have held the office of president of the United States have been lawyers. As of 2007, twenty-five of the forty-three presidents of the United States have been lawyers. Between 1877 and 1934, for example, more than 70 percent of the presidents, vice presidents, and cabinet members combined had law degrees. The most recent lawyer in the White House was President William Clinton (1993–2001).

Traditionally there have also been many lawyerpoliticians in the U.S. Congress. At the beginning of the 109th Congress in 2005, there were fifty-eight lawyers among the one hundred members of the U.S. Senate (58 percent), and 172 lawyers among the 435 voting members (40 percent) of the U.S. House of Representatives. Although the number of lawyers in Congress has declined somewhat over the past several decades, lawyers are still clearly the largest occupational group in both houses. For comparison, in 1943, 58 percent of the House and 74 percent of the Senate had law degrees; in 1955, 57 percent of the House and 60 percent of the Senate had law degrees; in 1975, 51 percent of the House and 67 percent of the Senate had law degrees; and in 1985, 44 percent of the House and 61 percent of the Senate had law degrees. One of the lowest number of lawyer-politicians occurred in 1995, when only 39 percent of the House and 54 percent of the Senate had law degrees. Because lawyer-politicians dominate the U.S. Congress and many state legislatures, these legislative bodies have tended to adopt lawyers' ways, lawyers' language, and lawyers' approaches to problem solving.

There are many reasons why the United States has so many lawyer-politicians while most other countries have so few. First, the American legal profession is much larger and more diverse than the legal professions in most other countries, and its boundaries are not always clearly defined. Thus, many law firms in the United States include lawyer-lobbyists and are heavily involved in attempting to persuade governmental decision makers in all three branches of the U.S. government. One advantage that those with law degrees have in U.S. politics is that they can leave and return to their jobs as lawyers if they fail to win an election. Lawyers also hold a much higher status in the United States than they do in many other societies. Since political candidates in the United States are usually individualistic political entrepreneurs who may have little attachment to their political parties, the skills that lawyers bring to the campaign trail can give them an advantage in politics. Both lawyers and [Page 1144]campaigners in the United States need the skills of argumentation, verbalization, advocacy, mediation, and negotiation, especially since the parties have little control over the choice of candidates. Law schools also train lawyers to be comfortable discussing policy proposals, to master the intricacies of human relations, to understand complex and technical information, and to strategize—all skills that are also useful for politicians. After winning political office, lawyers are familiar with procedurally oriented systems of decision making such as those that dominate American legislative bodies with weak party discipline. Especially in societies where voting tends to be class-based and where socialist and working-class parties compete effectively, one is likely to find many fewer lawyer-politicians than in the United States. American voters, however, tend to see lawyers as representative of broad middle-class values, and lawyer-politicians are strongly represented in both U.S. political parties.

...