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8 American J. Crim. Just. 1 (1983-1984)

handle is hein.journals/acnjrlocm8 and id is 1 raw text is: A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR THE TROUBLE WITH LAWYERS, ETC. The operations of the U.S. courts and of the legal profession are being called into question by a variety of legal scholars and practitioners, adding their voices to the growing chorus from the dissatisfied public. It has now been more than a decade since the last major commission on crime--the National Advisoray Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals--reported that public opinion polls consistently show that the public believes the courts free the guilty and harrass the innocent while persecuting the black and poor and catering to the wealthy. A more critical assessment can hardly be imagined. And recent events haven't changed that evaluation very much. In the past few years, several members of the legal profession have joined the call for reform. One of those voices is that of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, who told members of the American Bar Association this year that public confidence in lawyers has continued to drop, even as the numbers of attorneys in the U.S. has doubled in the past 20 years to a current 650,000--two-thirds of all the lawyers in the world. And Burger himself was critical of his profession, citing absurd lawsuits such as a father suing to have his child's grade in English changed and a football fan suing to revise a referee's ruling. When we must constantly witness spectacular expansions of court dockets, requiring more and more judges, something is wrong. When we see costs of justice rising, we see our public esteem falling, something is wrong. . . . The entire legal profession--lawyers, judges, law teachers--have become so mesmerized with the stimulation of the courtroom contest that we tend to forget that we ought to be healers of conflict, the Chief Justice said. 1