by RICH CASSIDY on JULY 10, 2011
This week I am at the 120th Annual Meeting of the Uniform Laws Commission in Vail, Colorado. This is the 18th consecutive annual meeting of the Commission (formally known as the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws) that my wife and I have attended.
I don’t believe that when I attended my first Commission meeting in the summer of 1994, I really expected the Commission to become a constant and important part of my professional life. But it certainly has.
As I have watched Commissioners come and go over the years, it seems like they break into two groups. Some just don’t like it. Perhaps they just did not have realistic expectations as to what the work of the Commission is or how it is done. Or perhaps the demands of family, practice, or other commitments, make service for more than a year or two impractical.
The rest seem to be “lifers.” Once they participate they are hooked and they strive to maintain their commissions so that they can continue. Plainly, I am in that category.
There are many other commissioners who are hooked as well. We look forward to attending, or have attended, 20 annual meetings. The prize is life membership and thus the right to continue to participate in the work of the Commission for the rest of our lives, without the imperative of a commission from our home state governor or other appointing authority. Out of a total membership of some 386 lawyers, judges, and law professors, 38 are life members.
Don’t get me wrong: The work of the Commission is very important and as far as I am concerned is very much worth my time and energy. But I wonder whether it would have held my time and attention all these years if it were not for the personal relationships that we have developed here over the years.
Commissioners spend time together. Our annual meetings have until recently been 9 days long (this year we cut back to 8). We are on the floor reviewing and debating proposed uniform legislation, which is read line by line, all day of every day of the meeting, except Sunday afternoon. There are social events that occupy most Commissioners and their spouses and significant others almost every evening. During the year between annual meetings, drafting committees meet for 2 ½ days on many weekends and do other meetings by telephone. And of course, there is a growing torrent of email traffic among drafting committee members and observers.
It’s easy to write about the substance of our work. Over the years, hundreds, in fact thousands, of books, law review articles, and newspaper and magazine articles have been written about the Uniform Laws that we produce. There have even been a few publications about the process we use to produce those laws.
What you are not likely to find is much of anything about the personal relationships that make the whole experience fun as well as worthwhile.
That makes sense. It’s not of much interest to persons outside of Conference.
But as I hear about what is happening in that other national legislative body, the Congress (the one that produces mandatory legislation, often preemptive of state law), I wonder if a decline in personal relationships is not a major source of the rancor and partisanship that seems to hold the country hostage.
I don’t mean to say that all Congress has to do to fix our political system is to do what we do. I understand the job of running the most powerful nation in the history of the world is much tougher and much more complex than operating the Uniform Laws Commission.
But there are some universals. One of them is that personal relationships matter. Perhaps we would all be better off if Congress worked back towards being a more personal institution.
Rich