Friday, May 30, 2008 Seares: Killing lawyers By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
I HAVE long stopped explaining to non-lawyer friends that the line "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" in Shakespeare's "King Henry the Sixth" says more than that.
Omitted from the popular slur against lawyers is the context in which Dick the Butcher said it, responding to revolutionary leader Jack Cade's plan to sow chaos.
Lawyers represent order and justice, thus the need for anarchists to eliminate them. The line flatters, not demeans lawyers but it's widely used, if in jest, to put them down.
The killing of Richard Sison, lawyer to Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza, raises the quote anew on courtroom corridors or in pubs where lawyers meet and talk legalese (to unwind, they shed off barong or coat and tie, but not "legalspeak").
Assault
The IBP doesn't see the execution-style murder of Sison as occasion for ribbing. Instead, the lawyers group views it as assault on the often-bashed profession, believing he was killed because of the law work he did.
But should lawyers feel they're being singled out? Is there a focused, systematic targeting of lawyers?
Bodies that piled up recently were mostly of crime suspects (just released from prison, on bail arranged by lawyers). If somebody is rallying people to "kill all the lawyers," nobody's paying heed.
Lawyers don't have to feel threatened as members of a tribe under siege.
They can fret more on (a) how breakdown of law and order hurts everyone, not just lawyers, and (b) how wheels of justice can really plod.
There's some irony here: Lawyers who at times slow justice down for a client are now pushing it to pick up speed.
