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In Pakistan, or U.S., lawyers make a stand

Monday, November 12 at 12:00 AM

By David H. Getches

What a strange sight: demonstrators in dark suits and ties being clubbed by police. Hundreds of lawyers have been rounded up and held in jails to put down a revolt against Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The general is supposedly a friend of the United States and President Bush just this week reiterated his commitment to keep sending billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan. So, are these lawyers troublemakers who deserve beatings and incarceration?

The Pakistani lawyers took to the streets after the president suspended the constitution, dissolved the supreme court and four provincial high courts, and shut down privately owned television news channels. This followed the firing of the nation’s chief justice. To lawyers here in the United States it is not surprising that their counterparts in Pakistan would stand up for the rule of law. That’s what lawyers do.

The Colorado attorney’s oath swears support for the U.S. Constitution and the state constitution. It also requires that one not reject “the cause of the defenseless or oppressed” for personal reasons.

Keeping the oath can result in snide lawyer jokes that associate the attorney’s work with the deeds of sometimes unsavory clients. How can lawyers who are themselves virtuous and law-abiding stand in court in their nice suits next to Nazi skinheads and tattooed drug peddlers?
Well, they are holding the government accountable to the Constitution. And, in the end, the same rules they enforce against the government in cases involving “the least among us” will apply when the rights being asserted are free speech by a newspaper reporter or freedom against unreasonable search of a good neighbor’s home — or our own home.

Of course, some lawyers go too far. And they are disciplined severely. When Mike Nifong, in prosecuting the Duke lacrosse players for rape, withheld exculpatory DNA evidence he departed from the rule of law and he was disciplined — fired, disbarred, prosecuted. Lawyers are held to a high standard for anything they do within the judicial system.

The popular misconceptions of lawyers come not from the occasional ethical lapses of lawyers, which are pursued zealously by the profession itself. Rather they come from a failure to understand the lawyer’s commitment to the rule of law. When several lawyers at fancy law firms volunteered their time to represent suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo they were severely criticized. A deputy assistant secretary of Defense even called on corporate clients to boycott the law firms, and questioned the motives of the lawyers doing the apparent pro bono work who, he said, must be “receiving monies from who knows where.”

Understanding that those lawyers are really on the right side of the war on terrorism requires understanding that they are fighting for the constitutional principles that terrorists would destroy. If we are intimidated into suspending our constitutional protections of due process, right to counsel, and habeas corpus we concede defeat in the war on terrorism.

Shakespeare understood. In Henry VI, Part 2, one of his comedic characters was plotting a rather silly overthrow. But he knew what stood in the way, and said: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

Then as now, the lawyers were the first line of defense of law and order.

What is at stake in Pakistan is of grave proportions. And the outcome matters to the security of the United States and the world. The January elections in Pakistan have been delayed to keep the general in power. The rule of law is being suspended in a country that is a nuclear power, that harbors the Taliban who are resurgent in Afghanistan, that likely is the hiding place of Osama bin Laden, and that is presumed to be our ally in the war on terrorism.

The lawyers resisting Musharraf’s edict, like other lawyers, know that freedom and democracy can survive only under a rule of law, not of men. And they know that without constitutional framework, government in Pakistan could spiral into dangerous instability and chaos. And with it could go the safety of much of the world.

David H. Getches is the dean of the University of Colorado Law School.

READER COMMENTS

Oh plueeeze!!
Lawyers are at least the cause of half of the problems in this Nation right now!!
And to automatically equate ALL lawyers worldwide is a farce, to say the least.
I hear lawyers all the time whine about how the "rule of law" has been usurped by the current Administration.
So when is the attorney march planned?
And does anyone really believe that IF there was a march, it wouldn't honestly be to protect there incomes?
Sheesh, but then the author is not only a lawyer, but runs a lawyer factory, so what does one expect????

Posted by Jim in Erie on November 15, 2007 06:09 AM

to Yaakov Watkins

For Liberty & Justice for all.

I like a good lawyer joke as much as the next guy. What I don't like is people who think that the rule of law should favor people like them. I also don't like people that equate accused rapists, murderers, etc... with convicted rapists, murderers, etc... as if the state has never falsely accused, indicted and brought to trial innocent people. The Constitution provides a framework for justice in this country which requires the vigorous participation of defense lawyers to ensure that the innocent remain innocent until proven guilty. You can't say that we have the greatest form of government based on the Constitution and the rule of law and then rail against the very people that make it great.

Posted by Todd on November 14, 2007 12:47 PM

You point out that lawyers are the first defense of law and order. Unfortunately, lawyers are also the first defense of rapists, murders, muggers, terrorists, thieves, and dishonest politicians.

While you may believe that the second is the price of the first, some of us believe that lawyers could be a bit more selective in their efforts.

If we lose the war on terrorism, many of us will die. Being killed is a denial of civil rights, albeit one that the legal profession appears to be curiously unconcerned with, unless it is done by the courts.

Lawyers frequently argue for a suspension of constitutional rights. When a professor has more freedom of speech than a student, when a landowner is required to follow bizarre rules in the use of his property, when certain minority cultures are granted more rights than other minority cultures, or when government refuses to guarantee personal safety but denies citizens the right of personal defense, we frequently find lawyers at the root of these losses of freedom.

The Fourth Amendment right "of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" is used to restrain the police. Lawyers seem curiously uninterested in using it to protect people from thieves, murderers and rapists. Nor does it seem to apply to building and zoning inspectors.

When a fear of litigation effectively eliminates entire industries, something is wrong. Horseback riding used to be recognized as a moderately dangerous activity, indeed the invention of cars was seen as an improvement in safety. When the fear of lawsuits made renting horses overly expensive, something was lost.

In some places, the fear of litigation eliminated obstetrical physicians. Yet the legal profession takes no responsibility for their part in the effective denial of medical care to rural and indigent women.

The root of public distrust of lawyers is the profession's seeming disregard of justice in favor of intricate laws and selective interpretation. When people are unable to predict what the their rights and responsibilities are in the public arena, they rightly distrust the system that creates and maintains the laws.

Posted by Yaakov Watkins on November 12, 2007 08:31 AM

The scary part is that this guy and his lawyer buddies actually believe this! They won't admit that their "ethics" is nothing more than worship of the almighty dollar, "justice" be damned!! Nifong has not yet been punished as he has yet to be prosecuted and convicted by the federal government for his blatant violation of three men's civil rights. The law profession offers up the deposed Nifong as an example of lawyer discipline in hopes that we will ignore the rest of the criminal activity. A prosecutor in Centennial who is having sexual relations with a judge, and yet goes on "processing" victims of their own little revenue generation operation. A family "court" system where justice is never a consideration as much as generating revenue by blatant violations of human rights while producing income for dozens of people no thinking person would ever hire with their hard earned dollars. Asked any "father" in America if the systems produces justice or protects their rights after they have been "processed". The lawyers are NOT the first line of defense for peoples rights - it's the soldier. Lawyers are absent from the battlefield because their is no money in standing up for truth and justice!!

Posted by RS on November 12, 2007 08:13 AM