Law Day 2011
“The Legacy of John Adams:
From Boston to Guantanamo”

The 2011 Law Day theme “The Legacy of John Adams: From Boston to Guantanamo” provides us with an opportunity to consider John Adams, explore the historical and contemporary role of lawyers in defending the rights of the accused, and renew our understanding of and appreciation for the fundamental principle of the rule of law.

If you go to the American Bar Association's Law Day website -www.lawday.org - you can find  some key facts and historical examples regarding the Boston Massacre, John Adams, and his legacy including these Q&A:

Q. Who was John Adams?
A. Resistance leader and patriot, advocate and diplomat, and constitutional theorist and political activist, John Adams became our nation’s first lawyer-president in 1797. He developed one of the largest legal practices in colonial Massachusetts. Born in 1735,Adams died at age 90 on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, Adams’s fellow revolutionary and later political opponent, died on the same day.

Q. Who coined the famous phrase “a government of laws, not men”?
A. Writing the Novanglus essays in 1775, Adams first referred to “a government of laws, not of men.” The phrase expressed his firmly held belief in the rule of law as the foundation for republican government and the basis for political liberty. It was subsequently incorporated into the 1780 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, written principally by Adams and a model for the subsequent U.S. Constitution of 1787. The phrase was also famously quoted in the landmark 1803 U.S. Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison, which established judicial review, the federal courts’ power to void executive and legislative acts as unconstitutional.