This is a bit from a friend of mine's BLOG (http://sandefur.blogspot.com) on being an attorney. He's a Constitutional Attorney, the kind who works at small, privately funded organizations who try to fight and protect the constitution (these kind tend not to get rich, sadly). I thought I would share it, because it gives an interesting perspective that you don't see very often these days, given that only the b@stardly type lawyers seem to get the spotlights.
Jason
:: Friday, August 01, 2003 ::
Before I go: I mentioned below a nice article about lawyering as an honorable profession. This brings to mind something I?ve thought about a lot. I know I?m new, and naïve and all that, but I think lawyers are the most ethical people there are. Obviously there are exceptions, just as there are unethical policemen or sports stars or whatever, but think about it?lawyers have to study ethics in school, must pass a test on it to get their license (in California, ethics is always on the bar, and you have to pass a separate ethics test, as well). Then throughout their career, lawyers must take continuing education classes in ethics, and they are constantly subject to disbarment if they act unethically. There are lawyers whose only job is to weed out unethical lawyers, and we have conferences and hotlines to handle ethics. There?s even an entire weblog devoted to legal ethics?are there weblogs devoted to the ethics of plumbers or electricians? We have the ABA Code of Professional Responsibility, and the ABA Rules of Professional Conduct, and separate state codes of ethics, and, in California, lawyer?s ethics rules are actually written into the state statutes. (California Business and Professions Code §6068). As lawyers, of course, we are trained to ask ?What does this word mean???and so we spend a lot of time covering ethical questions in that way. For instance, I am legally required to ?preserve at every peril to [my]self, the secrets of my client.? Does that mean, to the point of death? I don?t know?I doubt it?but what other profession spends that much time figuring out their responsibilities and applying them? I bet none.
This brings me to this infuriating article by Dennis Prager. Now, I don?t know if Mr. Prager is a lawyer?he?s not licensed in California, anyway?but this article is written in total ignorance of the real world of the law.
Prager writes that ?that more Americans rightly fear being ruined by the American legal system more than being killed by a terrorist.? Now, that?s true. But whose fault is that? California has been suffering the ravages of the Unfair Business Practices law, a vaguely written law which has allowed some people to go around the state blackmailing innocent businesses, and harming the already fragile California economy. It?s awful: but whose fault is it? Isn?t it the fault of the politicians, who passed, and refuse to fix, this law? Some lawyers have been exploiting it?and some of them have recently been disbarred?but the politicians get away with it.
?Innumerable American children are terribly harmed by family lawyers who egg on their clients to destroy the other parent,? writes Prager. Now, maybe there are such lawyers; I don?t know. I worked in a family law firm for a year before starting law school, and in my experience, it?s just the opposite: these ?parents,? so called, come into the office eager to hurt the other spouse in any way possible, and knowing that the most effective weapon for that is the children. The lawyer, meanwhile, is stuck in the worst position, knowing that he?s legally and ethically required to ?zealously advocate? for his client. Why do you think so many lawyers become alcoholics, Mr. Prager? They?re required to work for people who sometimes have the most savage instincts.
Prager claims that everything in the law is corrupted, and he gives some examples.
?Most people leave law school morally worse than when they entered.? Now, I don?t know what, if any, law school Mr. Prager went to, but I graduated just last year, so I have some fresh memories, and let me say this: Prager is full of crap. In law school, I met some of the finest people there are, and I never met a person who was truly immoral. Just whom is Mr. Prager referring to? How about my friend Rosa, who not only managed to get through law school with a very good GPA, and who now works for indigent clients in the Inland Empire, and not only became an American citizen while in law school?but did it all as a single parent, raising a junior-high age kid? Rosa is one of the nicest, most honorable, lovely (in both senses) people you could ever hope to meet. Or my friend Melanie, our valedictorian, an outstanding student?who also was first to come to the aid of anyone who asked for help, was a youth pastor, and a leader of the law school community, running programs to raise money for our law school charitable drives? Melanie may be the finest human being I have ever met. Is she one of these ?morally worse? people? What about Ken Lammers: a man who does some of the hardest and most noble work there is? Or my friend Amy, who worked as a public defender in Atlanta? I know people who went through law school while holding down a job and raising a family! Are these people ?worse?? I know nobody who left law school morally worse than when they entered, Mr. Prager, and I know a few people who left it morally better.
?The funniest jokes I ever heard were those told by Soviet dissidents,? Prager continues. ?the funniest today are about lawyers? because they come from the same place?bitterness at one?s helplessness against an overwhelming and oppressive power?? That?s true, you would feel helpless, wouldn?t you? You show up in court, having had who-knows-what done to you in a back room by the cops?and, you know, the good citizens of the country don?t care too much to inquire what goes on in there (you wouldn?t?a got arrested if you didn?t deserve it, right?). So you show up in court, and you?re confronted by the full force of the state. You ought to be intimidated. There?s a man with a gun in the corner, and a big old guy in a big black robe and a hammer in his hand staring down at you, judging you in his mind before he gets the evidence. He?s got mandatory sentencing guidelines, passed by enraged, and not-very-thoughtful voters, ready to send you to jail for life. And then you find out that, due to rules you?ve never heard of, like the ?inevitable discovery rule,? all those Bill of Rights you heard about in high school don?t really protect you like you thought they did. Surprise! Yes, you need help. And whom will you turn to, Mr. Prager? To protect you, not against the lawyers, but against the state?against the politicians. You turn to your lawyer, Mr. Prager?and if you don?t have one, you?ll get one for free. What politician got you a free lawyer, Mr. Prager? None: the lawyers got it for you.
I agree with Prager that the international law community is a threat to this country and our Constitution. Who will protect that Constitution from the inroads of the international law community? Mr. Prager, with his little radio show? Or the lawyers?
Prager gets even crazier when he writes ?There are moral laws and immoral laws. Both decent and vicious governments make laws. The Holocaust began legally.? Did the lawyers start the Holocaust? That?s news to me. I thought it was started by politicians, whose first step was to undermine the due process of law. Wasn?t the legal profession one of the prime targets of anti-Semites? Lawyers, after all, were supposedly all Jews.
?Too many judges are unfit for their position,? continues Prager. ?How else can one explain the New York State Supreme Court ruling that women can bare their breasts in public because men can? How to explain the judges who liberate criminals only to have those criminals murder and rape again? Or the many judges who regard their primary role as imposing their values on society?? Now, goodness knows, I?m no fan of many judges, and I think they do just these things. But note that Prager gives no specific examples. Instead, he throws around things that ?everybody knows? and that he read ?somewhere.? He doesn?t mention the judges who are overly severe; who throw people in jail for things that shouldn?t be crimes to begin with. He doesn?t talk about people who are getting in trouble for moving dirt from one place to another on their property. He doesn?t talk about people thrown in prison for smoking something conservatives find distasteful. He doesn?t talk about people being sentenced to unreasonably long prison sentences for relatively minor crimes because of mandatory sentencing guidelines??crimes? and ?sentences? created by politicians to appease the mob. Who?s the bad guy here?
Prager writes that ?[j]uries are now merely weapons in the hands of amoral attorneys. The attorney's purpose is to win, not to find justice, let alone truth, and the jury is selected only for that purpose.? Now, that?s not quite true, since a prosecutor?s duty is to ?seek justice,? but even if it were true, so what? Whose fault is this? The lawyers? Or the juries?and the people of common sense who find ways to evade jury duty? Who say ?it?s boring,? or ?it?s time consuming,? or who just avoid it because everyone else does? This is a country of the people, Mr. Prager, and the rule of law depends on us. Nobody else is going to save us from ourselves. The people responsible for the ills of our jury system are the people who leave that system in the hands of irrational and irresponsible people when they could very easily do otherwise. Blaming the lawyers for the failure of the jury system is like blaming the flies for the rottenness of the meat. Most lawyers I know revere the jury system, and revere the courts?can that be said of your fellow laymen?
Finally, Prager adds a smear on John Edwards: ?And now a trial lawyer is seeking the Democratic Party;s nomination for president.? Yes, and how many of our presidents have been lawyers, Mr. Prager? How many of our greatest citizens?
Prager concludes that ?f America is destroyed, it will be done legally.? Forgive me, Mr. Prager, but if this nation is destroyed, it will be destroyed politically. It is not the lawyers, but the politicians?the loyal servants of the people who have no care for the Constitution, no concern for the rule of law?who do things like signing the campaign finance law even while acknowledging that it?s unconstitutional, or finding the most attenuated connection to ?interstate commerce? to justify their absurd regulations, or seeking clever ways to evade having replacement elections for governor?it is the politicians who are tearing holes in our Constitution, and it is the lawyers, at the ACLU, at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, at the Pacific Legal Foundation, at the Institute for Justice, who are standing by to do their level best to defend that Constitution.
A century and a half ago, a lawyer and a great citizen gave a speech about how America might be destroyed. His answer was not that lawyers were a danger?just the opposite. His answer was that disrespect for the rule of law was our greatest danger. ?When men take it in their heads to day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty, fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded?.
??the American People are much attached to their Government; ?I know they would suffer much for its sake; ?I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it f or another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.?
This lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, warned that ?If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.? It?s not the lawyers who will commit that act: it?s the mindless politicians, serving the emotionalist voters, who do not care about?who do not even read the Constitution; who take away the money people earn to give it to other people; who steal people?s homes to give them to Costco and Home Depot; who constrain habeas corpus (the jewel of the common law) to near-meaninglessness; who wage a relentless war on vice and ignore the innocent casualties; who believe that they should run our lives for us?it is they who will destroy this country, Mr. Prager. And, I?m sorry to add, you?ve often endorsed such politicians.
There may be unethical lawyers out there, just as there are dishonorable people everywhere. But a great many of us take our oath to support and defend the Constitution very, very seriously. Some of us spend all our working hours?and many hours after work?working to make this country a better and freer and safer place, Mr. Prager, and your prejudicial populist rant does nothing but bare your ignorance before us all.
Okay, I?m leaving now.
:: TMS 8:20 AM [+] ::
...
Jason
:: Friday, August 01, 2003 ::
Before I go: I mentioned below a nice article about lawyering as an honorable profession. This brings to mind something I?ve thought about a lot. I know I?m new, and naïve and all that, but I think lawyers are the most ethical people there are. Obviously there are exceptions, just as there are unethical policemen or sports stars or whatever, but think about it?lawyers have to study ethics in school, must pass a test on it to get their license (in California, ethics is always on the bar, and you have to pass a separate ethics test, as well). Then throughout their career, lawyers must take continuing education classes in ethics, and they are constantly subject to disbarment if they act unethically. There are lawyers whose only job is to weed out unethical lawyers, and we have conferences and hotlines to handle ethics. There?s even an entire weblog devoted to legal ethics?are there weblogs devoted to the ethics of plumbers or electricians? We have the ABA Code of Professional Responsibility, and the ABA Rules of Professional Conduct, and separate state codes of ethics, and, in California, lawyer?s ethics rules are actually written into the state statutes. (California Business and Professions Code §6068). As lawyers, of course, we are trained to ask ?What does this word mean???and so we spend a lot of time covering ethical questions in that way. For instance, I am legally required to ?preserve at every peril to [my]self, the secrets of my client.? Does that mean, to the point of death? I don?t know?I doubt it?but what other profession spends that much time figuring out their responsibilities and applying them? I bet none.
This brings me to this infuriating article by Dennis Prager. Now, I don?t know if Mr. Prager is a lawyer?he?s not licensed in California, anyway?but this article is written in total ignorance of the real world of the law.
Prager writes that ?that more Americans rightly fear being ruined by the American legal system more than being killed by a terrorist.? Now, that?s true. But whose fault is that? California has been suffering the ravages of the Unfair Business Practices law, a vaguely written law which has allowed some people to go around the state blackmailing innocent businesses, and harming the already fragile California economy. It?s awful: but whose fault is it? Isn?t it the fault of the politicians, who passed, and refuse to fix, this law? Some lawyers have been exploiting it?and some of them have recently been disbarred?but the politicians get away with it.
?Innumerable American children are terribly harmed by family lawyers who egg on their clients to destroy the other parent,? writes Prager. Now, maybe there are such lawyers; I don?t know. I worked in a family law firm for a year before starting law school, and in my experience, it?s just the opposite: these ?parents,? so called, come into the office eager to hurt the other spouse in any way possible, and knowing that the most effective weapon for that is the children. The lawyer, meanwhile, is stuck in the worst position, knowing that he?s legally and ethically required to ?zealously advocate? for his client. Why do you think so many lawyers become alcoholics, Mr. Prager? They?re required to work for people who sometimes have the most savage instincts.
Prager claims that everything in the law is corrupted, and he gives some examples.
?Most people leave law school morally worse than when they entered.? Now, I don?t know what, if any, law school Mr. Prager went to, but I graduated just last year, so I have some fresh memories, and let me say this: Prager is full of crap. In law school, I met some of the finest people there are, and I never met a person who was truly immoral. Just whom is Mr. Prager referring to? How about my friend Rosa, who not only managed to get through law school with a very good GPA, and who now works for indigent clients in the Inland Empire, and not only became an American citizen while in law school?but did it all as a single parent, raising a junior-high age kid? Rosa is one of the nicest, most honorable, lovely (in both senses) people you could ever hope to meet. Or my friend Melanie, our valedictorian, an outstanding student?who also was first to come to the aid of anyone who asked for help, was a youth pastor, and a leader of the law school community, running programs to raise money for our law school charitable drives? Melanie may be the finest human being I have ever met. Is she one of these ?morally worse? people? What about Ken Lammers: a man who does some of the hardest and most noble work there is? Or my friend Amy, who worked as a public defender in Atlanta? I know people who went through law school while holding down a job and raising a family! Are these people ?worse?? I know nobody who left law school morally worse than when they entered, Mr. Prager, and I know a few people who left it morally better.
?The funniest jokes I ever heard were those told by Soviet dissidents,? Prager continues. ?the funniest today are about lawyers? because they come from the same place?bitterness at one?s helplessness against an overwhelming and oppressive power?? That?s true, you would feel helpless, wouldn?t you? You show up in court, having had who-knows-what done to you in a back room by the cops?and, you know, the good citizens of the country don?t care too much to inquire what goes on in there (you wouldn?t?a got arrested if you didn?t deserve it, right?). So you show up in court, and you?re confronted by the full force of the state. You ought to be intimidated. There?s a man with a gun in the corner, and a big old guy in a big black robe and a hammer in his hand staring down at you, judging you in his mind before he gets the evidence. He?s got mandatory sentencing guidelines, passed by enraged, and not-very-thoughtful voters, ready to send you to jail for life. And then you find out that, due to rules you?ve never heard of, like the ?inevitable discovery rule,? all those Bill of Rights you heard about in high school don?t really protect you like you thought they did. Surprise! Yes, you need help. And whom will you turn to, Mr. Prager? To protect you, not against the lawyers, but against the state?against the politicians. You turn to your lawyer, Mr. Prager?and if you don?t have one, you?ll get one for free. What politician got you a free lawyer, Mr. Prager? None: the lawyers got it for you.
I agree with Prager that the international law community is a threat to this country and our Constitution. Who will protect that Constitution from the inroads of the international law community? Mr. Prager, with his little radio show? Or the lawyers?
Prager gets even crazier when he writes ?There are moral laws and immoral laws. Both decent and vicious governments make laws. The Holocaust began legally.? Did the lawyers start the Holocaust? That?s news to me. I thought it was started by politicians, whose first step was to undermine the due process of law. Wasn?t the legal profession one of the prime targets of anti-Semites? Lawyers, after all, were supposedly all Jews.
?Too many judges are unfit for their position,? continues Prager. ?How else can one explain the New York State Supreme Court ruling that women can bare their breasts in public because men can? How to explain the judges who liberate criminals only to have those criminals murder and rape again? Or the many judges who regard their primary role as imposing their values on society?? Now, goodness knows, I?m no fan of many judges, and I think they do just these things. But note that Prager gives no specific examples. Instead, he throws around things that ?everybody knows? and that he read ?somewhere.? He doesn?t mention the judges who are overly severe; who throw people in jail for things that shouldn?t be crimes to begin with. He doesn?t talk about people who are getting in trouble for moving dirt from one place to another on their property. He doesn?t talk about people thrown in prison for smoking something conservatives find distasteful. He doesn?t talk about people being sentenced to unreasonably long prison sentences for relatively minor crimes because of mandatory sentencing guidelines??crimes? and ?sentences? created by politicians to appease the mob. Who?s the bad guy here?
Prager writes that ?[j]uries are now merely weapons in the hands of amoral attorneys. The attorney's purpose is to win, not to find justice, let alone truth, and the jury is selected only for that purpose.? Now, that?s not quite true, since a prosecutor?s duty is to ?seek justice,? but even if it were true, so what? Whose fault is this? The lawyers? Or the juries?and the people of common sense who find ways to evade jury duty? Who say ?it?s boring,? or ?it?s time consuming,? or who just avoid it because everyone else does? This is a country of the people, Mr. Prager, and the rule of law depends on us. Nobody else is going to save us from ourselves. The people responsible for the ills of our jury system are the people who leave that system in the hands of irrational and irresponsible people when they could very easily do otherwise. Blaming the lawyers for the failure of the jury system is like blaming the flies for the rottenness of the meat. Most lawyers I know revere the jury system, and revere the courts?can that be said of your fellow laymen?
Finally, Prager adds a smear on John Edwards: ?And now a trial lawyer is seeking the Democratic Party;s nomination for president.? Yes, and how many of our presidents have been lawyers, Mr. Prager? How many of our greatest citizens?
Prager concludes that ?f America is destroyed, it will be done legally.? Forgive me, Mr. Prager, but if this nation is destroyed, it will be destroyed politically. It is not the lawyers, but the politicians?the loyal servants of the people who have no care for the Constitution, no concern for the rule of law?who do things like signing the campaign finance law even while acknowledging that it?s unconstitutional, or finding the most attenuated connection to ?interstate commerce? to justify their absurd regulations, or seeking clever ways to evade having replacement elections for governor?it is the politicians who are tearing holes in our Constitution, and it is the lawyers, at the ACLU, at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, at the Pacific Legal Foundation, at the Institute for Justice, who are standing by to do their level best to defend that Constitution.
A century and a half ago, a lawyer and a great citizen gave a speech about how America might be destroyed. His answer was not that lawyers were a danger?just the opposite. His answer was that disrespect for the rule of law was our greatest danger. ?When men take it in their heads to day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty, fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded?.
??the American People are much attached to their Government; ?I know they would suffer much for its sake; ?I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it f or another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.?
This lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, warned that ?If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.? It?s not the lawyers who will commit that act: it?s the mindless politicians, serving the emotionalist voters, who do not care about?who do not even read the Constitution; who take away the money people earn to give it to other people; who steal people?s homes to give them to Costco and Home Depot; who constrain habeas corpus (the jewel of the common law) to near-meaninglessness; who wage a relentless war on vice and ignore the innocent casualties; who believe that they should run our lives for us?it is they who will destroy this country, Mr. Prager. And, I?m sorry to add, you?ve often endorsed such politicians.
There may be unethical lawyers out there, just as there are dishonorable people everywhere. But a great many of us take our oath to support and defend the Constitution very, very seriously. Some of us spend all our working hours?and many hours after work?working to make this country a better and freer and safer place, Mr. Prager, and your prejudicial populist rant does nothing but bare your ignorance before us all.
Okay, I?m leaving now.
:: TMS 8:20 AM [+] ::
...
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