To Serve and Protect #4 — And now more from the loyal opposition
Representing the Unpopular Client
By Denise Lieberman ACLU/EM Legal Director
(Her copy in black and red, AI Exec Director’s comments in blue)
During a McCarthy-era American Bar Association convention, the ABA declared that any attorney representing a person associated with the Communist party was unworthy of membership in the bar, and even demanded that lawyers take loyalty oaths.
For the record, all attorneys must take oaths. This is a hold over from the days of yore, when oaths meant something due to honor and the nearly universal belief in a Divine Lawgiver. The oath in Indiana, as in most states, ends with “So help me God.”
Some in the legal profession now demand oaths of Christians that will cause them to have to choose between Faith or compromise.
Subsequently, when the civil rights movement highlighted that racial and political minorities were denied equal access to the courts, the bar promulgated rules stating that a lawyer’s representation does not constitute endorsement of a client. But the concept is better applied in theory than in practice. Despite the bar’s response that an advocate does not vouch for the justness of a client’s cause but only for its legal merit, lawyers frequently consider the impact their association with the unpopular client will have on their law practice, and generally it is only public interest organizations like the ACLU that can take on unpopular clients without risking their livelihood, and even groups like the ACLU face many repercussions from these cases.
Actually the guiding principle in the profession is less about whether the client is unpopular and more about whether the client has access to mammon. Of course, unpopular people tend to be people with little money, and popular people tend to be people with much money. The Golden Rule.
But without organizations like the ACLU and lawyers willing to take on these causes many of civil liberties cases would not be taken at all.
Not ture. As long as 42 USC 1983, a federal statute, allows for fee shifting under 42 USC 1988, and as long as other federal and state statutes ensure that civil rights attorneys are paid you will find attoreys willing to sue for valid civil rights claims.
A legal system that affirms rights for all of its citizens but then effectively denies the unpopular the ability to assert those rights is unjust and counterproductive to the ideals of justice.
RIGHT ON SISTER! Now, what happens when a legal system denies the unpopular the ability to become attorneys in the first place? Is that not the best path to ensuring that those like them end up without representation? Had Blacks been kept out of the state bars then civil rights litigation would not have been as successful, as that Brown v. Board of Topeka was a team of Black attorneys. So, what if pro-lifer and conservative Christians could be culled out and kept out of the state bars? No more Scalias or Thomas or Alitos — a dream come true for the Left.
The inevitable, but unfortunate, result is a compromise of . . . constitutional rights. … And who we consider unpopular is but a reflection of societal bias and the existing flaws of the justice system. The mainstream litigant is not rejected as an unpopular client; it is those whose actions, speech, viewpoints or agendas are outside the mainstream. It is not those with resources; it is the poor. And, it is disproportionately people of color. It is precisely those we reject as unpopular clients who are most likely to face bias and suffer injustice in our imperfect legal system. … The protection of civil rights and civil liberties will be achieved only through representation of the unpopular client.
RIGHT ON ONCE AGAIN! And so who will stand up for the unpopular bar applicant who is denied admission due to his religion, or political views, or belief in Higher Laws doctrine?
THE ARCHANGEL INSTITUTE WILL.
