Friday is Law Day, an annual event first celebrated in 1958 after President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued a proclamation urging Americans to proudly reflect upon the legal system bequeathed to them by the founding fathers.
This year's theme is "A Legacy of Liberty -- Celebrating Lincoln's Bicentennial."
In explaining the rationale behind the upcoming activities in courthouses and classrooms across the country, American Bar Association President H. Thomas Wells, Jr., cited Lincoln as having "united a nation and fought for justice."
His legacy as a "prominent and inspiring leader" endures today, Wells continued, because he appealed to "the fundamental values of human equality, justice and liberty as set forth in our nation's founding documents."
Since the ABA provides source material for Law Day, these observations are pretty much what millions of America's school children are going to hear this Friday. Yet, while Lincoln was everything Wells described him to be, his legacy has been so subverted by activist judges that the Great Emancipator would be appalled by significant aspects of American law today.
Lincoln's commitment to making equality under law a reality for millions of black people systematically oppressed by white supremacists is clear. However, the operative word is "equality," a principle guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which provides in relevant part that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Straightforwardly enunciated and seemingly incapable of being misconstrued, this bedrock constitutional provision endured unadulterated for almost 100 years. Then, in the early 1960s, affirmative action reared its ugly head.
Despite the convoluted logic offered by its social engineers and the liberal judges who indulged them, affirmative action turned the time-honored principle of equality under law on its head by sanctioning governmental-sponsored preferential treatment for minorities.
Although corralled in recent years by a more conservative Supreme Court, affirmative action continues to exist today under a different pretext. Originally conceived as an instrument to redress past instances of discrimination, it's now masquerading as an admirable method of ensuring diversity in American institutions.
The underlying assumption, of course, is that such diversity is a good thing for the nation regardless of how it is achieved.
However, America's strength is actually the unity of its people, not some artificially impressed diversity. Those who think diversity per se is something to celebrate should take a hard look at Iraq, Kenya, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Bosnia, and a seemingly endless list of other countries throughout history where it became the catalyst for violence, instability and, in some instances, political collapse.
Abraham Lincoln must have been convulsing in his grave last Wednesday when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Ricci vs. DeStefano, a case that illustrates just how far the United States has veered from the plain meaning of equal protection under law.
In 2003, 118 applicants took an examination given by the New Haven, Conn., Fire Department for promotion to the ranks of captain and lieutenant.
The lead plaintiff, Frank Ricci, who is dyslexic, strived mightily to prepare for the test and did, in fact, very well on it. However, the City of New Haven scrapped the results because too many white firefighters scored highly while no minorities did well enough to be considered for promotions.
Ironically, New Haven had hired an independent company to prepare the test to ensure that it was devoid of any supposed cultural bias. Thereafter, 18 of the applicants who had scored well on the test brought suit against New Haven alleging, among other things, that the city had violated the equal protection clause by depriving them of the fruits of their success merely because they are white.
They're right, of course, a fact that would have become crystal clear to Abraham Lincoln just as soon as he recovered from the shock that such reverse discrimination had been perpetrated in the first place.
Now, however, it's up to a seemingly divided Supreme Court to determine whether the plaintiffs will be vindicated or whether Lincoln's ideals will take it on the chin once again.
However, the betrayal of Lincoln's legacy doesn't stop there. He would, for example, recoil in disbelief that in today's America students can't say a non-denominational prayer at public school athletic events, or that abortion has now been deemed a constitutional right, or that illegally seized evidence is subject to exclusion at criminal trials, or that any American court anywhere would actually hold that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.
And that's just the beginning.
So, yes, this Friday, America's school kids will be told all about the ideas and ideals of Abraham Lincoln. They will not, however, be told about how they and he have been betrayed.
And considering that this is the America that will someday be bequeathed to them, that's the story they really need to hear.
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Daniel Leddy's On The Law column appears each Tuesday on the Advance Editorial Page. His e-mail address is JudgeLeddy@si.rr.com.