Richard Reeves on Political Books
Richard Reeves on Political Books Polls in the 1974 California gubernatorial campaign indicated that Jerry Brown, the Democrat, began the contest far ahead of his Republican opponent, Houston...
...Granted, the lawyers' trickery demonstrated just how laid-back electronic journalism is in California, but it also showed, once again, how much lawyers can get away with when they intone their mumbo-jurnbo to the non-counseled...
...All I can tell is that things have slipped a long way when a U.S...
...What scares me is not the amassing power...
...It is a profession, after all, that stands by when one of its most distinguished practitioners, Edward Bennett Wil ms, makes a public mockery of American jurisprudence...
...Liebennan...
...The adoption of the canons of ethics in 1908," Lieberman writes, "gave to a small elite an instrument of considerable power with which to control the entire profession...
...Brown didn't, but he also didn't want to appear to be afraid of confrontation...
...He called a lawyer...
...Selfdefined ethics are not morals...
...Radio broadcasts were also prohibited by "the contract...
...the bar] could and did use the canons of ethics, together with bar examinations, increasingly stringent educational requirements, and character committees to limit the admission of would-be advocates and to lift the practice of the rules of capitalism...
...Crisis at the Bar ends where I think it ought to begin: "Unless lawyers themselves begin to make the necessary changes in their professional lives and relationships more will be lost than the right to call lawyers ethical...
...Leaving aside the obvious facts that 24 of 39 presidents of the United States and routine majorities of Congress have been lawyers, the brothers (and a few sisters) of the bar have moved into the top ranks of every important institution of the society, a trend as America has transfonned nation of producers of paperchasers and deal-makers...
...When stations in Los Angeles and San Fran~ cisco wanted to broadcast segments, they were told it was forbidden by "the contract...
...But then I don't come from a law school...
...was a private agreement binding on no one but the people who signed it...
...Not merely the lawyers' freedom, but that of all hangs in the balance...
...What do you do when you want to get away with doing the opposite of what you want people to think you're doing...
...But before he says that, Lieberman documents that lawyers are not particularly interested in self-reform...
...Considering the chicken-and-egg problem-which came first-it is impossible for me to untangle my thoughts as to whether the rise of lawyers is primarily responsible for the decline into dealing as a replacement for real work...
...It's possible...
...The fortunes they daily acq uire in every province from the misfortunes of their are surprising...
...Richard Reeves on Political Books Polls in the 1974 California gubernatorial campaign indicated that Jerry Brown, the Democrat, began the contest far ahead of his Republican opponent, Houston Flournoy...
...I'm one of those simple souls who isn't shielded by jargon and the Code of Professional Responsibility and Canons of Judicial Ethics of the American Bar Association...
...Javits was citing a higher morality: the bar's Canons of Ethics...
...Right subject...
...The rest of us are only left to reflect that if politics is too important to be left to politicians, things like government are too important to be left to lawo · yers...
...So, Flournoy, with less to lose, wanted television debates...
...Senator, in this case Jacob Javits of New York, could avoid taking a stand on Watergate for two years by simply saying: "As a lawyer, it would be improper for me to comment...
...It Richard Reeves is the author of Convention His column is a regular feature of The Washington Monthly...
...But it worked: the Brown-Flournoy debates were something of a media non-event...
...Jethro K. Lieberman, an attorney himself, goes after the mumbo-jumbo and his profession in a book published this month by W.W...
...Norton: Crisis at the Bar: The Unethical Ethics of Lawyers and What to Do About It...
...Some of that paranoia may come from living in a city, Washington, with one lawyer for every 40 citizens-and believing that the decline of a society is directly proportional to the number of lawyers therein...
...Judging by the silence of bar associations, it is to plead his client gUilty-in this case, former Central Intelligence Director Richard Helms-then plead for mercy, outside the court and say that the conviction is a badge of honor...
...They worked out a contract that Flournoy was forced to sign if he wanted the debates, which were usually held at odd hours on public television stations in minor markets like Fresno...
...John Crevecoeur in 1787: "Lawyers are plants that will grow in any soil that is cultivated by the hands of others, and once they have taken root they will extinguish every vegetable that grows around them...
...Wrong book...
...The contract, of course, wasn't worth the paper it was written on...
...Where I come from, that is called contempt -not of the court, but for the law...
...A private ethic, based on the adversary system, that does its best to make the lawyer in power a person answerable only to a client or his fellow attorneys...
...The sacred canons, according to Crisis at the Bar, were written by three fonner Confederate Army colonels in ·Alabama in 1887...
...There have been small cracks in the walls around the profession-allowing lawyers to advertise is one-but, in general, the bar has been successful in substituting its private ethic for public morality in the society...
...In fact, he called all his lawyers...
...This one from Letters of an American Farmer, published by H. St...
...Being a clever young man and a graduate of Yale Law School, Brown knew . exactly what to do when he etc., etc...
...The most most bungling member of that profession, will, if placed in the most obscure part of the country, promote litigiousness and amass more wealth than the most opulent fanner with all his toil...
...What the bar has done, as Liebennan points out in smaller, everyday examples, is to use the canons to recreate a medieval guild system in which the members of a craft control the production, conditions of entry and membership, and the price structure of their business...
...however, did bring to my attention a quote for my antilawyer me...
Vol. 10 • April 1978 • No. 2
