2 weeks Ago
In Shakespeare’s King Henry VI, Part 2, Dick the Butcher shouts to the mob: “Let’s kill all the lawyers.”He does so to further his effort to destroy the laws of civil society in order to create chaos. Through satire, Shakespeare emphasized the importance of lawyers as the gatekeepers of a free society where basic rights are preserved.
Indeed, the late Supreme Court Justice Stevens observed that “Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.” in Walters v. National Association of Radiation Survivors (1985).
The Trump Administration’s recent executive orders echo the tactics of Dick the Butcher. Those orders have been directed to a number of law firms to date. Their direct effect is to punish those firms, and to intimidate all other lawyers, for representing clients (e.
g., Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton, Special Counsel Robert Mueller) with whom the administration has disagreed on a personal or philosophical basis. Specifically, they have banned the targeted law firms from government contracts, from having contact with certain federal employees and even from entering certain federal buildings.
The consequence of such orders is to deprive the firms of their ability to effectively represent their clients and ultimately, as their clients leave, to “kill” the law firms.Regrettably, several of the targeted law firms have capitulated and have even promised hundreds of millions of dollars in free legal services to the administration’s favorite causes. In exchange, the administration withdrew the sanctions of the executive orders pertaining to those firms.
At least three other law firms have challenged the legality of the executive orders in court.Federal Judge Beryl Howell presiding in one of those cases — Perkins Coie — has preliminarily blocked most of the terms of one such executive order. In doing so, the judge stated that the administration’s position “threatens the very foundation of our legal system.
”Judge Howell was absolutely correct. If lawyers must trim their sails to the dictates of the administration, the rights of a free society will be in jeopardy. No matter how independent and courageous America’s judges may be, they cannot protect individual rights on their own.
They simply have no authority to act as roving adjudicators who can scan society and identify and remedy any abuse of rights that they perceive.Law firm targeted by Trump could have been ‘destroyed,’ chairman says in explaining deal with TrumpTo the contrary, their authority is limited to resolving cases and controversies that are brought before them. Such cases and controversies are brought by lawyers who represent clients who assert their rights.
To the extent that lawyers are prevented, by intimidation or otherwise, from representing such clients, those rights will go unprotected and the essence of our free society will be diminished.Francis J. Brady is a Connecticut attorney,.
