If Liberty Dies in Our Hearts, No Constitution, no Law, no Court Can Save It

Learned Hand’s “I am an American” Speech for Today

Judge Learned Hand

I am very tired tonight and much of my weekend will be spend catching up on doctoral program work that I have been too beaten down to do. I have a number of friends who have undertaken doctoral studies in various fields later in life, none as old as me, who all say that somewhere about two-thirds of the way through their programs that they hit the wall. I am there. I don’t think that it would be so bad if we lived in a world that was less morally and politically convoluted than ours is today, but we play the had we are dealt.

I will close this work week with an excerpt of a speech by Judge Learned Hand, of the 2nd Appeals Court, on 21 May 1944, two weeks before D-Day. Hand is considered by many to be the greatest American jurist never appointed to the Supreme Court. Hand died on 18 August 1961 still serving as a judge after 52 years.

In his I am an American Speech of May 21st 1944 in New York’s Central Park Hand addressed nearly a million and a half people during a speech given at a naturalization ceremony for new immigrant citizens. In it he stressed that all Americans were immigrants who had come to America in search of liberty. Liberty, he said, was not located in America’s constitutions, laws, and courts, but in the hearts of the people.

Hand began with these words:

We have gathered here to affirm a faith, a faith in a common purpose, a common conviction, a common devotion. Some of us have chosen America as the land of our adoption; the rest have come from those who did the same. For this reason we have some right to consider ourselves a picked group, a group of those who had the courage to break from the past and brave the dangers and the loneliness of a strange land. What was the object that nerved us, or those who went before us, to this choice? We sought liberty; freedoms from oppression, freedom from want, freedom to be ourselves. This we then sought; this we now believe that we are by way of winning.

However, in the most frequently cited section of the speech he said:

What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it… What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.

What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.

The interesting thing is that while Hand referenced Jesus in the speech, is that he had abandoned the Christian faith long before while a student at Harvard. Then, he became an agnostic and skeptic and that hoped for some kind of cosmic justice where the least would be equal to the greatest. Likewise, his words as to what freedom really is stand in stark contrast to everything Donald Trump and his loyal supporters say and do as they attempt to turn Liberty into the privilege of the few, while making all others slaves to one degree or another.

What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.

Sadly, we have seen that happen before throughout history, even in the United States. Now, before our very eyes and it is happening again and will continue for as long as Trump is in power or people who follow his totalitarian beliefs, and perversions of history, overt racism, and denial of civil, voting, economic and religious rights of his opponents is practiced, be it at the Federal, state, or local level. Trump and his Nazi like followers are savage, with no understanding, appreciation, or respect of the culture, laws, and freedoms, they presume to defend. They are no different than the enemies that the United States and its allies were fighting when Hand gave his speech on that day in May of 1944 when the defeat of Nazi Germany was by no means certain.