"Freedom under law is like the air we breathe," wrote President Dwight Eisenhower as he prepared his speech celebrating the first U.S. Law Day this week. "People take it for granted and are unaware of it—until they are deprived of it. The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened where there is no rule of law1. The dread knock on the door in the middle of the night . . ."
May Day, U.S.S.R., in the land of that knock, was to be another sort of day. From the marble tomb of Lenin and Stalin, in the shadow of the Kremlin walls, traditionally comes a dictator's propaganda of arms and marching men—with a rattle of rockets in the background.
Between May Day, U.S.S.R., and May Day, U.S.A., lies the difference between those who use laws as instruments for force and those who believe in the force of law to bring order and decency to human endeavor; the difference is one of the outlaw and the lawful. To emphasize that difference, to provide an occasion for national rededication to the rule of law, the President proclaimed:
WHEREAS our Government has served as an inspiration and a beacon light for oppressed peoples of the world seeking freedom, justice and equality for the individual under laws, and
WHEREAS universal application of the principle of the rule of law in the settlement of international disputes would greatly enhance the cause of a just and enduring peace, and
WHEREAS a day of dedication to the principle of government under laws would afford us an opportunity better to understand and appreciate the manifold virtues of such a government and to focus the attention of the world upon them:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, May 1, 1958, as Law Day.