Due Process

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST -- James Gould Cozzens -- Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

This story of a three-day murder trial in a small U.S. county seat is as skillfully served up as The Postman Always Rings Twice, and a lot more nutritious. As an unusually natural history of the public and private behavior of lawyers, it is shrewd, entertaining, instructive. As a study of the meaning and function of law and justice in an average U.S. community, especially of the ways in which law and the community interact, it is exciting and complex. But Author Cozzens lacks the daring or the depth to tackle his provocative subject head on. Had he done so, The Just and the Unjust might not have made the Book-of-the-Month Club (of which it is the August selection), but it might have been a major novel. Instead, the book is 1) the author's best work, 2) the year's most interesting literary disappointment.

The story concerns the fate of three petty criminals who were on hand when a kidnapped dope-peddler was shot and dumped in a creek. It is told in terms of the legal consequences of their act. Hence it is less a story, in the conventional sense, than a report on a process : the due process of law, as embodied in the performance of some widely different practitioners. There is old Judge Irwin, with his constant concern about motive. He represents the moral salient of his profession. There is Judge Vredenburgh, with his stout attention to hard facts regardless of motive. He is the law's common denominator. There is District Attorney Martin Bunting, with his faith in the power of pure fact. He is the sort of man who is liable to overestimate the intelligence of a jury. There is Harry Wurts, the rakish, wise cracking defense attorney. Through him Cozzens shows the reader the classic tricks of the trade and the barroom cynicism of the barristers. And there is Assistant District Attorney Abner Coates, a third-generation lawyer, second-rate but competent. He is the daringly dull hero.

Witnesses, jury and defendants are little more than stooges for Author Cozzens' demonstration of how the law works. But the demonstration itself is expert. Through his carefully chosen legal types, Cozzens describes the law as a hierarchy, and justice as a business. As his lawyers make a personal game of saving or destroying the three defendants, as they match wits in the courtroom, rib each other or talk shop out of sessions, Cozzens develops a larger theme--the trial & error of the law--that check & balance of competing individuals, juggled fact and eternal compromise out of which rough justice somehow emerges.

But here Author Cozzens hits a dramatic snag. Justice, democracy, responsible citizenship are profound in conception and difficult in practice. If their workings are to be fully revealed and their moral roots laid bare, they must be shown contending with profound problems. Author Cozzens' book poses none. As chronic criminals, his defendants have little moral depth or ambiguity. Toward what little there is, the author is almost pharisaically priggish. Hence he fails to feed the law its most typical and baffling fare--the tragically irreducible blend of good and evil.

There is plenty of excellent observation in this novel, and a plentiful fear of nonconformity. There is not the slightest tremor of human mystery; there is nothing of the fear of God. Lacking these, human life is deprived of its splendor, law of its dignity, society of its tragicomic stature. So is The Just and the Unjust.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.