Do Lawyers Make Better Presidents?

What do the following Presidents have in common: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt? All are frequently voted by historians as amongst the 10best U.S. Presidents – and all were lawyers or law school graduates.

And what do the following Presidents have in common: Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Richard Nixon? All are frequently voted by historians as among the 10 worst U.S. Presidents – and all were lawyers or law school graduates.

Combined with the fact that many highly regarded presidents were not trained in law – including George Washington, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower – these lists suggest that legal training is not necessarily correlated with the good judgment, political acumen, and leadership skill necessary to excel in the Oval Office. But there’s more to the story than the best-and-worst rankings.

The most important number may be that 25 out of 44 presidents graduated from law school or practiced law. (The two are not the same thing, especially in earlier times when most lawyers entered the profession through apprenticeship.) Lawyers represent only 0.36% of the U.S. population, but over 56% of presidents. The electorate, it seems, considers legal training a useful characteristic in presidents – or least not a disqualifying one.

It stands to reason that legal credentials would be common among the people who excel at politics and public service. People with an interest in government tend to gravitate toward law, since most government posts involve law in one capacity or another, whether it be making it, interpreting it, or enforcing it. As a result, the pool of credible presidential candidates is more lawyer-heavy than the public at large. This helps explain why three out of four of this year’s presidential and vice-presidential candidates – Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine, and Mike Pence – were practicing lawyers before running for public office. And why one former president – William Howard Taft – and one serious presidential candidate – Charles Evans Hughes – later became chief justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The modern J.D. degree builds knowledge and skills useful for office-holders even if they never represented clients. President Barack Obama, for example, never had a private practice comparable to that of First Lady Michelle Obama. But like President Bill Clinton before him, he taught constitutional law at a law school (where one eye could also be kept on political opportunities). For which of our past lawyer-presidents was the daily practice of law a major part of their personal and professional identity? President John Adams considered one of his greatest professional accomplishments to be his successful defense of some very unpopular criminal defendants: British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre. President Abraham Lincoln was a self-taught lawyer renowned for his courtroom skills. His “country lawyer” persona remains a defining part of his legacy. Rounding out this list of presidents whose outlook on life may have been shaped by their legal practice is Richard Nixon, who practiced law both before entering Congress and during his mid-1960’s political hiatus. Nixon’s most well-remembered statement – “I am not a crook” – interacts poignantly with Lincoln’s advice to young lawyers: “Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.”

A law degree is of course no guarantee that today’s student will win tomorrow’s election. It does not guarantee how history will remember future lawyer-presidents. But as a credential that is both relevant for the job and respected by the voting public, a law degree seems to be a sound political investment.

Scrutinizing the Candidates' Tax Policy Proposals

Professor Katherine Pratt, who teaches Tax Policy and related subjects, scrutinizes the tax policies of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates:

Hillary Clinton’s Tax Plan
Hillary Clinton’s tax plan would increase federal revenue by over $1 trillion in the next 10 years, by increasing taxes on very high-income Americans, but not on middle-class and poor Americans. Her tax proposals, which are detailed and complex, combine a new surtax (an income tax rate increase) on the top 1 percent of earners, a new minimum 30% effective tax on taxpayers earning $1 million or more per year, limitations on the tax benefits of itemized deductions, and estate and gift tax increases. She also proposes an “exit tax” on U.S. corporations that try to avoid U.S. taxes by moving to low-tax jurisdictions overseas.

Follow-up questions for Hillary Clinton:
What do you propose to do with the additional $1+ trillion of revenue your tax plan would raise in the next decade? For example, would you prioritize federal deficit reduction, funding the infrastructure improvements or new child care programs you’ve proposed already, or funding new proposals for tax cuts for middle-class or poor Americans?

Donald Trump’s Tax Plan
Donald Trump has scaled back an earlier tax plan that would have dramatically reduced income taxes, but also would have reduced federal revenue by many trillions of dollars and risked serious, negative macroeconomic effects. His revised tax plan proposes tax rate cuts for taxpayers at all income levels, but disproportionately benefits high-income Americans, through individual income tax rate cuts, corporate tax and business tax rate cuts, repeal of the estate tax and alternative minimum tax, and the conversion of certain tax credits into tax deductions. The revised tax plan is difficult for economists to model because it quite vague and lacks details. In light of the extensive tax cuts in the revised plan, it probably would reduce federal revenue and increase deficits and interest costs over the next 10 years, which ultimately would undermine the intended pro-growth effects of the Trump tax plan unless Trump proposes enormous new spending cuts.

Follow-up questions for Donald Trump:

• How would you pay for your tax cut proposals? Both liberal and conservative economists agree that “pro-growth” tax cuts don’t pay for themselves. Your proposals are intended to promote economic growth, but that assumes that your tax cuts are not deficit-financed. If you plan to fund tax cuts through spending cuts, what spending programs would you cut? “Discretionary” federal spending already has been slashed. Would you propose spending cuts in any of the mandatory spending programs (such as Medicare and Social Security) that comprise over half of federal spending? 
• How and when will you fill in the details of your revised tax plan, so that economists can model the revenue effects of your plan?
• Are you being vague about your tax plan to deflect attention away from federal taxes and your refusal to disclose your tax returns? 
• Why do you propose converting tax credits (such as the child tax credit), which benefit all taxpayers, into deductions, which do not benefit non-itemizers at all and disproportionately benefit Americans in the highest tax brackets? Respected scholars in economics and law (Lily Batchelder, Fred Goldberg, and Peter Orszag) recommend the opposite of what you are proposing; they suggest that we convert tax deductions and exclusions into tax credits, to contain the runaway costs of unlimited tax benefits and to eliminate upside-down tax subsidies that disproportionately benefit high-income Americans. Why are you proposing the conversion of tax credits into deductions?

Obama’s Fateful Warning

By Professor Eric Miller

Yesterday, President Obama gave an impassioned speech warning against singling out the American Muslim community, and indeed Muslims worldwide, as complicit in the violence that erupted so tragically in Orlando this weekend. In an angry response to Donald Trump’s insinuation that American Muslims as a group support and hide terrorists, President Obama asked “Where does this stop?”

While most news outlets focused on that soundbite, what the President said next was much more fateful. The President, a former professor of constitutional law, went on to invoke perhaps America’s most reprehensible act after slavery: the internment of Japanese Americans at the outbreak of World War II. He said, “We have gone through moments in our history before when we acted out of fear, and we came to regret it. We have seen our government mistreat our fellow citizens, and it has been a shameful part of our history.”

It was then California Attorney General Earl Warren who took the decision to intern Japanese Americans, and it was a decision he was to regret for the rest of his life. His decision, upheld in the infamous case of Korematsu v. United States, condemned tens of thousands of Americans to confinement based only on the fear that, collectively, they posed a threat to national security. Yet, like the many Muslim Americans who serve with distinction in the American Military today, many of those Japanese Americans fought gallantly on our behalf in the Second World War. Eventually American acknowledged its wrong, and in 1988, under President George W. Bush, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act to compensate the surviving members of the Internment, apologize, and “prevent the recurrence of any similar event.”

Earl Warren’s eventual response to his worst decision was to be his best: as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he extended the equal protection of the law to all Americans in Brown v. Board of Education, the decision that entrenched desegregation and equal citizenship for all as cornerstones of the American way of life. Brown was an important political decision in another war: the Cold War fight for the hearts and minds of peoples around the world who found American claims to moral leadership sullied by the evils of racial discrimination. Undoing the wrongs of the Internment, and of segregation, enabled America to champion freedom, justice, and democracy around the globe. President Obama told us yesterday that America once again faces its Korematsu moment. We must not go down that path again.

Learn more about professors' expertise on election topics in Loyola's Election 2016 Commentary Guide.

Trump is “Yugely” Wrong in His Attack on Judges

By Professor Laurie L. Levenson

Donald Trump crossed the line when he attacked Judge Gonzalo Curiel as a “Mexican” who could not be fair in his case. Put aside that Judge Curiel was born in Indiana. Put aside that Judge Curiel is a well-respected jurist who has dedicated his career to public service. Put aside that Judge Curiel has done nothing to deserve Trump’s invective. Trump crossed the line by suggesting Judge Curiel has done anything other than completely comply with the ethical standard for judges.

First, there is nothing in the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges that disqualifies a judge because some litigant has had the audacity to make offensive public comments about the judge’s ethnicity. That rule makes sense. Otherwise, litigants could shop for judges simply by making unfounded accusations against the judge assigned to their case. To the contrary, the rules support the independence of judges by not having them recuse themselves unless they have a “personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding.” Canon 3(C)(1)(a). There is no indication that Judge Curiel has a personal bias requiring him to disqualify himself. Moreover, Trump has never even made a motion to recuse the judge.

Second, Judge Curiel has always acted appropriately in Trump’s case. Nothing shows that his “honesty, integrity, impartiality, temperament or fitness to serve as a judge [has been] impaired.” Canon 2(A). In fact, the judge went out of his way to allow Trump to focus on his campaign rather than defend his case before the election.

Finally, Trump is picking on a target who cannot readily defend himself. Under Canon 3(A)(6), Judge Curiel cannot make comments about a pending case. Trump took a sucker punch at a person he knows is ethically barred from responding to his outrageous claims.

Overall, Judge Curiel should be praised for the ethical and responsible manner in which he has handled this recent controversy. Trump, on the other hand, should read the Code of Ethics.