JuridicsUSA: American Bar Association: Scalded for redicidivism to putatively extreme left

The stolid solid online Politico (Sept25,2k10)  in a report by Josh Gerstein tries to fathom trends and overall direction of American Bar Association which has a long history of trying to arrogate power over the entire profession of jurists, lawyers, judges, juridical scholars (muxh like American Medical Association of yesteryear, now rather constrained.  In recent years ABA had gone thru the refiner's fire, sorted itself into circumspect tendencies, deferring to the ancient canon of suaviter in modo.

The American Bar Association, which was dogged for decades by criticism over a perceived liberal bent, is risking reigniting that debate by taking bold stands on a pair of hot-button social issues.

At its annual meeting last month in San Francisco, the nation’s largest lawyers’ group passed a formal resolution, urging every state in the union to permit same-sex marriages.

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In June, the ABA took what it acknowledged was an “extraordinary action” by filing a brief urging a federal judge in Arizona to block enforcement of that state’s highly controversial law intended to crack down on illegal immigration.

Critics contend that the back-to-back moves on the polarizing issues of gay marriage and immigration show that the ABA is again sliding to the left politically and putting its reputation at risk.

“One of the problems with having a viewpoint on anything and everything is, when the public disagrees with us on something they understand or think they understand thoroughly, that undercuts the willingness to defer to us on something they don’t understand,” said Leslie Jacobs, a former president of the Ohio Bar Association. “It compromises our prestige and our persuasiveness and you only have so many opportunities to influence people.”

In ABA palaver, a key idea comes into focus currently on two issues: "The ABA’s new president, Stephen Zack of Miami, defended the group’s support for same-sex marriage and its opposition to the Arizona immigration law as part of the organization’s broad duty to defend civil rights."

Alberto Gonzales, Federal attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, summed up the matter well:  “I can’t speak for other Republicans or other conservatives, but I can say it bothers me and I’m not a member of the ABA,” said Alberto Gonzales, who served as White House counsel and attorney general under President George W. Bush. “I have a problem with the ABA weighing in on issues like that because they’re telling a lay person they’re lawyers and this is the way it should be, implying to be otherwise is unlawful or unconstitutional. ... They don’t get to decide that. Judges decide that, not the ABA.”  The organization no longer has a monopoly of representation of American lawyers (a population in the zone of 1.2 million active lawyers in the country); the ABA, the largest single lawyer's collectivity, neverthless is a glaring minority of the total number, having some 400,000 members. That makes the ABA short some 800,000 adherents.

The ABA has an inhouse ideology that is far from a reasonably democratic outlook; the organization has become ideolugy-driven, all the while sicklied over with the pale cast of thawt, not the real thing -- at least not if you've studied reformational philosopher of jurisprudence, Herman Dooyweerd.  His Encyclopedia of the Science of Law is slowly appearing and may reach the goal of translating and publishing this monumental 5-volume research in the field, albeit from a decisively Christian perspective. At the same time, HD's general philosophical work has already been Englished and is undergoing textual scholarship to produce an annotated critical edition, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (3 hefty volumes, 1953-1957, plus a free-standing Index volume [IV]).

While we await the 10-year project ahead, Gershon's full 3-page article is h+ly recommended.

-- Lawt

Juridics: USA: Law prof Bainbridge muses on what's behind "the US Attorney mess" that has Dems calling for ousting of Attorney General Gonzales

Prof. Stephen Bainbridge's blog entry for Mar13,2k7 reflects on what's being called "the mess," an apparent fiasco which elicited an apology from the head of the US Department of Justice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today. Now Hillary Clinton has joined the fray, calling for the resignation of the Bush Administrations' Attorney General; she was foiled in her duplicitous effort by the re-emergence of her own involvement of the Clinton Admin's firing of all 93 Federal Prosecutors in 1994.

[Clinton's Attorney General, Janet] Reno suddenly fired all 93 U.S. attorneys. She said the decision had been made in conjunction with the White House. Translation: The President ordered it. Just as the best place to hide a body is on a battlefield, the best way to be rid of one potentially troublesome attorney is to fire all of them. The U.S. attorney in Little Rock was replaced by a Clinton protege. The long-running Waco emergency that culminated in the deaths of eighty Branch Davidian men, women, and children again proved that Janet Reno was not in charge in the Justice Department. Webster Hubbell, Hillary's former law partner in Little Rock and Bill's man at Justice, coordinated tactics with the White House. The President did not even talk to his attorney general throughout the crisis. -- "Justice denied: as President Clinton has time after time made a mockery of his oath of office, his attorney general has followed suit - Janet Reno," by Robert Bork (Sep1,1998) National Review,

On the apology, Tony Czuczka reports on the M&C (Mar 13, 2k7):

Washington - Faced with allegations that the Bush administration fired US federal prosecutors for political reasons, the top US justice official Tuesday acknowledged that 'mistakes were made' but rejected opposition calls for him to resign.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sought to portray last year's dismissal of eight prosecutors as driven by the White House and his own former chief of staff Kyle Sampson, who resigned Monday.

'I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility,' Gonzales told reporters.

But he insisted he was not informed of all details of the process. 'I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on,' he said.

But Bainbridges' remarks, while they do not render the former chief of staff innocent, they do supply space for questioning why the staffer and the White House may have wanted to get rid of the Attorney. Easily, in this speculative realm, the Attorneys may have been pursuing their own agendas, setting their own priorities, politically-motivated contrary to the directions set by Gonzales. Here's Bainbridge:

...[T]here is big difference between putting political constraints on a prosecutor's general exercise of his or her prosecutorial discretion and allowing political calculations to factor into specific decisions. For example, I think it is perfectly appropriate for the President and Attorney General to set law enforcement priorities. Say, the Attorney General says pornography is a priority. US Attorneys who fail to enforce that priority appropriately can be fired. Contra what some in the blogosphere seem to believe, US Attorney's serve at the pleasure of the President and may be terminated either with our without cause at any time.

In contrast, investigations and prosecutions aimed at furthering a prosecutor's own career or those that are aimed at individuals or entities because of their political status are improper. Robert H. Jackson warned about the dangers that political considerations posed to the reputation of federal prosecutors as "dispassionate, reasonable and just." Accordingly, both the ABA's Standards Relating to the Administration of Criminal Justice and the Department of Justice's United States Attorneys' Manual declare that political considerations are inappropriate factors in a decision to investigate and charge a specific person. If the US Attorneys in question were fired because they refused to bring voter fraud cases against Democrats or because they tried to bring voter fraud cases against Republicans, for example, we have a serious problem.

Two things for sure: neither the fired attorneys nor the Dems are to be trusted. This looks very much like the pattern already established to bring the present Administration absolutely to its knees.