Leadership Quote by Adlai E. Stevenson

Stevenson’s jab lands because it drags law off its mahogany pedestal and drops it under a fluorescent light, next to the oil pan. Calling it a “business service station and repair shop” isn’t just class resentment in a clever suit; it’s a diagnosis of what mid-century America was becoming: a nation where institutions increasingly existed to keep commerce running smoothly, not to pursue some lofty ideal of justice.

The metaphor does double work. “Service station” suggests routinized transactions, quick fixes, a customer-is-always-right ethic that flatters the paying client. “Repair shop” implies something is already broken - the social order, the corporate deal, the political mess - and the lawyer’s job is to patch it up efficiently, not to ask why it keeps breaking. Stevenson is needling the profession’s self-myth: the attorney as principled guardian of the Constitution. In his framing, the lawyer is closer to a mechanic for corporate machinery, judged by turnaround time and billable hours rather than wisdom.

Context matters: Stevenson was a cerebral Democratic politician in the era of booming corporate power, expanding administrative government, and a rapidly professionalizing white-collar class. He’d watched how policy, litigation, and lobbying braided together, making “law” feel less like a moral calling and more like a commercial utility. The line works because it’s funny in a slightly mean way, and because it tells an uncomfortable truth: the legal system can function as maintenance for capitalism, keeping the engine from seizing up, while calling the tune “justice.”