Snyder, Franklin G. --- "Foreword" [2012] ELECD 540; in Carpenter, M. Megan (ed), "Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Evolving Economies" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Evolving Economies

Editor(s): Carpenter, M. Megan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857934697

Section Title: Foreword

Author(s): Snyder, Franklin G.

Number of pages: 5

Extract:

Foreword
Franklin G. Snyder

Exactly one hundred years ago the British Distributivist Hilaire Belloc
wrote that "[t]he control of the production of wealth is the control of
human life itself."1 In the ensuing century, this control has increasingly
been exercised by governments, which today pervasively regulate every
aspect of wealth production. In the 21st-century United States there is not
a single significant economic decision made by a producer or consumer
that is not affected directly or indirectly by government controls.
Because the American government generally exercises such controls
via laws applied through its legal system, and because in America lawyers
enjoy monopoly power over the legal system, lawyers inevitably play
an enormously important role in the process. Lawyers are the group in
society who as judges and advocates manipulate2 the legal system on
behalf of their clients, whether government or private entity. What the law
should be may perhaps be a legislative question (in which non-lawyers are
allowed to have a say), but once the legislative text is settled, nearly all the
rest of its implementation will be in the hands of lawyers. Legislators may
pass statutes, but, as Chief Justice Marshall said, "[i]t is emphatically the
province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."3 As
the American judicial department is totally under the control of lawyers,4


1 Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State (1912).
2 "Manipulate" has something of a bad connotation, but I am using it in ...