People talk about ``the law of the land.'' The expression has become quite a cliche. But people cann't be made to integrate, socialize (the two are inseparable by Southern standards) by law.

I was having lunch not long ago (apologies to N. V. Peale) with three distinguished historians (one specializing in the European Middle Ages, one in American history, and one in the Far East), and I asked them if they could name instances where the general mores had been radically changed with ``deliberate speed, majestic instancy'' (Francis Thompson's words for the Hound of Heaven's pursuit) by judicial fiat. They didn't seem to be able to think of any.

A Virginia judge a while back cited a Roman jurist to the effect that ten years might be a reasonable length of time for such a change. But I suspect that the old Roman was referring to change made under military occupation -- the sort of change which Tacitus was talking about when he said, ``They make a desert, and call it peace'' (``Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant''.) .

Moreover, the law of the land is not irrevocable; it can be changed; it has been, many times. Mr. Justice Taney's Dred Scott decision in 1857 was unpopular in the North, and soon became a dead letter. Prohibition was the law of the land, but it was unpopular (how many of us oldsters took up drinking in prohibition days, drinking was so gay, so fashionable, especially in the sophisticated Northeast!) and was repealed. The cliche loses its talismanic virtue in the light of a little history.