The Law: Of the Greatest Importance

A President signs many proclamations, Lyndon Johnson last week told his White House guests. Some of them are "of great significance." Others, he continued in a monument to restraint, are of "somewhat lesser significance and import." The President just wanted to make clear that he thought that the proclamation he was about to sign—designating next Sept. 13 as World Law Day—Was in the great-significance category. The proclamation, said he, "expresses something of the greatest importance about the purposes of the American people and the purposes of the American nation. And that is our commitment to, and our quest toward, a...