Justice & Law Quote by Mortimer Zuckerman

A publisher’s joke about law isn’t really about law; it’s about power, pleasure, and the indignities of institutions. Mortimer Zuckerman’s line lands because it flips an everyday assumption: even mediocre sex can be a win, but even “good” law still feels like work. The punch is in the mismatch between outcome and experience. Law, in this framing, is a system that can deliver a correct result while remaining emotionally deadening - procedural, adversarial, and soaked in paperwork. Pleasure is incidental; compliance is the point.

The subtext is the worldview of someone who has spent a career near the levers of policy and elite dispute. For a publisher, law often shows up not as noble civics but as friction: libel threats, regulation, contracts, antitrust, the endless choreography of risk management. You can “win” and still feel slimed by the process. Zuckerman’s cynicism is less libertarian than managerial: institutions are judged by user experience, and the user experience is lousy.

There’s also a sly class signal. Comparing law to sex is a way to domesticate authority, to make the courthouse sound like a bad date: expensive, time-consuming, and somehow humiliating even when it goes well. It’s a quip built for cocktail conversation in a world where lawyers are both indispensable and resented - hired help with veto power.

The intent, finally, is self-mythmaking: the speaker casts himself as a practical operator who opted out of the sanctimony of the legal priesthood. It’s a dismissal that still acknowledges law’s dominance, which is why it stings.