Opinion: Lawyers can teach this nation how to disagree without being disagreeable

One of the most pressing problems in our nation today is the inability of citizens to discuss or debate public policy issues.

Instead of focusing on the reasonableness or logic of arguments related to those issues, our society seems to participate in a systematic form of attacking the individual with whom one may disagree. Citizens now insult, "put down," and attack those with whom they disagree, instead of focusing on the issue being debated or finding common ground.

The result is that fewer problems are solved and issues not advanced to the betterment of society. Our communities suffer from a lack of progress.

For the sake of our nation, our state, and our communities, such types of personal attacks must end.

There are various smaller-sized groups attempting to lessen the number of these attacks. In Cincinnati, this newspaper and a group called Beyond Civility – of which I am a member – are attempting to do so. The Your Voice Ohio news collaborative, the state bar’s Thomas Moyer Committee, and various individuals in Ohio are attempting to do so, too. Even nationally, a relatively small group known as the Braver Angels has taken up the effort.

Try as they might, these groups tend to be on their own, often pushing somewhat disparate agendas and not succeeding, albeit not for a lack of effort, but due to the lack of more closely aligned goals, concerted strategies and resources.

By training and experience, however, attorneys know how to make arguments on both sides of an issue, including making reasoned arguments on behalf of an issue or person with which that attorney personally disagrees.

Through that same professional training and experience, lawyers have the ability, when they so choose, to make reasoned arguments in opposition to the other side, and then share an appreciative coffee – or other beverage – with opposing counsel afterwards.

If the goal of helping to educate all citizens how to "disagree without being disagreeable" became the American legal community’s most important outreach effort for the next two or three years, I believe our nation and our state would be so much better off.

And the reputation of all lawyers, as a side benefit, would be enhanced.

So I heartily urge that the lawyers throughout the United States, through their organized bar groups like the American Bar Association, the Ohio State Bar Association and the Cincinnati Bar Association – the last 2 organizations of which I have previously served as president – lead our nation in a concentrated effort to educate all Americans on the ways we can "disagree without being disagreeable." The onus is on the legal community to initiate this transformative effort and to become a model for all others in our nation.

How do we get the lawyers to do this? Simple. I ask all Ohioans, make that all Americans, to contact every lawyer they know and then ask those lawyers in turn to contact their bar associations, and demand to have the bar associations initiate a nationwide, organized and concerted effort to help educate all citizens on how they can better debate the major issues of the day, and to teach our entire nation, when we disagree, how to disagree without being disagreeable.

In doing so, we as a people can shun aside personal differences and resolve the problems of the day.

Pat Fischer is the 157th Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, and former president of both the Ohio State and Cincinnati bar associations.