| On Veterans Day, Texas lawyers should pause to reflect on the freedoms veterans secured for all Americans and our duty as attorneys to further those freedoms. While this solemn day was originally enacted in 1938 as a legal holiday honoring World War I veterans on the annual anniversary of that war's armistice, it was expanded in 1954 to a holiday honoring all U.S. veterans.
I learned to value military service, and the freedoms it bestows, at an early age. My great-great-great-grandfather, Andrew Myers, served with the Union Army during the Civil War. Although he was a first-generation German immigrant who probably spoke little to no English, he put his life at risk to fight for the values that attracted him to this great nation: the belief that every person, rich or poor, is created equal; no matter a person's origins, nothing is unattainable in the United States for those who work hard.
He later served as a sergeant with the 6th U.S. Cavalry Regiment during the Indian campaigns and eventually ended up at a remote outpost named Fort Richardson in Jacksboro, Texas. After his discharge from the Army in the 1870s, he homesteaded land that is still in my family today.
Over half a century later, in World War II, my uncle P.D. Vaught had his B-17 bomber shot down over Germany; he was a prisoner of war for almost two years. Ironically, he was shot down not far from my family's ancestral home, fighting to bring the same freedoms to Europe that influenced Myers to leave Germany decades earlier in search of a better life.
Stories of my family's service had a great impact on my desire to serve. Given my grandfather's cavalry service, I was proud to serve in a modern-day U.S. Army cavalry regiment in Iraq. I often wondered if Sgt. Myers would be proud of me, despite the fact that I was an officer.
However, I had no doubt that he, and past veterans like him, would be proud to know that the U.S. military fights for the same freedoms and values today that it fought for at places such as Bunker Hill in the American Revolution, Antietam in the Civil War, Belleau Wood in World War I, Midway in World War II, Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War and Dak To in the Vietnam War.
Liberty and Justice for All
While it was the soldier who secured our freedoms with the sword on the battlefield, it was the lawyer who enforced our freedoms with the pen via courtroom battles such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The legal profession comes under attack for reasons both real and imaginary, but the Bill of Rights would be nothing more than a piece of paper without a judicial system enforcing Americans' freedoms. During my deployment in Iraq, I gained an extra appreciation of the importance of an effective legal system.
I served as the de facto mayor of Fallujah immediately after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. My mission was broad and included everything needed to establish a functioning democratic local government: establishing governing councils, building schools, and facilitating law and order. I worked with my Iraqi counterparts on an almost daily basis. While I was supposed to help them appreciate democracy, they helped me better appreciate our own democracy. [ See "Lawyers in Arms," Texas Lawyer, Sept. 27, 2004, page 1. ]
One of my tasks was to establish a local judiciary. While explaining what judges and lawyers were to Iraqis who had lived under a dictator, I was shocked to learn that judges and lawyers already existed in Iraq. However, what was foreign to them was the concept of an independent judicial system tasked with equally protecting the rights of all, instead of just the few with power. In the old Iraqi legal system, a trial before a jury of peers with an unbiased judge was a fiction. The Iraqis had yet to enact a constitution during my deployment, and the concept of constitutional rights seemed to have little meaning for them based on their experience with judicial enforcement. After all, what good are unenforceable rights?
My experience with the Iraqis made me better appreciate the core strength of U.S. constitutional rights, and the interaction between those rights and our legal system as a whole. I came away from it believing that a jury trial in front of peers overseen by an independent judiciary is the ultimate enforcer of hard-won rights and freedoms, which are non-existent in the absence of juries empowered to find facts or in the presence of judges who can rule based on who the parties are instead of what the facts are. Texas lawyers must ensure the existence of a judicial system that works to protect the rights of all, not just the rights of those favored by a particular ideology or economic background.
So, on this Nov. 11, honor veterans by defending the freedoms for which they sacrificed. Whether in a criminal or civil court, the Texas judicial system must treat everyone equally, enforcing rights and freedoms regardless of participants' wealth, color, gender or political affiliation. As lawyers, that is our duty to veterans.
State Rep. Allen Vaught is an attorney with Baron & Budd in Dallas. He served with the U.S. Army Reserve in Iraq where he was awarded the Purple Heart for injuries sustained during combat operations in Sadr City. He represents District 107 in the Texas House of Representatives where he serves as vice chairman of the Committee on Defense and Veterans' Affairs.
