CLIV. The Legal Bar Is Getting Close to the Floor

This week, with the anointment of Todd Blanche, I was thinking more about lawyers and the outsized role they are playing in the current regime. I am reminded of our second president, John Adams, who truly stuck his neck out and defended British soldiers who fired on colonists.

We are about to find out how many people still believe in the rule of law or accept a rule of tyranny. The legal profession is being tested in public.

A funny meme nowadays is the “I’m not a lawyer…” since even too much articulate verbiage can sound too much like being a real lawyer and hence, you’re in trouble. So, I am not a lawyer, but it seems the rule of law and a real democracy must co-exist, hand in hand, at all times, though too much of one and not enough of the other makes things much more complicated.

Through my recent journeys in Japan, I never saw a single advertisement of any kind on getting a lawyer, whereas on my return to the States, law firm placements for the people are almost inescapable. That is a difference between a society built on cohesion and one built on confrontation, and the power of the lawyer in American history is modeled in many of the Founding Fathers.

John Adams, our second president, was a well-to-do esquire of the time, and when he was retained to defend British soldiers after the Boston Massacre, I can only imagine the choice words between himself and his rabble-rousing cousin Sam Adams. Adams took the case knowing it was fraught with danger, but it wasn’t because he liked the British Army particularly or thought the crowd deserved what it got.

He did it because he believed the law meant something even when it was inconvenient to his career, or even his life.

Think about that.

That simple notion holds up the whole concept of being equal under the law.

And right now, in courtrooms and public institutions across the country, people who are supposed to know this simple principle are acting as if they never learned it or never believed it.

What we have seen from the Justice Department in this administration is dangerous. Federal judges have raised many concerns about lawyers misleading them and about court orders being defied, possibly with senior officials' knowledge or direction.

Emil Bove, Pam Bondi, Alina Habba, and Todd Blanche all took the same oath as every other member of the bar, yet their conduct has been documented at length by judges who have run out of ways to describe it.

The accumulating conduct is writing its own place in history, and the rule of law is under foundational pressure. That is why the legal profession needs to act to preserve the honor and reputation of its discipline and save democracy in the process.

So far, mostly crickets.

This is not a new failure. Professional organizations have a long history of arriving late to the right side of history. The bar was low and slow on civil rights, wrongful convictions, healthcare, and mass incarceration.

Yet young people across America grow up watching legal movies, courthouse television shows, and reading Grisham bestsellers. Some end up wanting to be lawyers and are even sitting in law school right now. They are learning what the profession tolerates. They are learning where the floor is when it comes to ethics and responsibility.

Thinking back to John Adams doing the uncomfortable work, we ought to remember why we broke from England in the first place. Colonists felt the law was being unequally applied. How could laws that sounded like edicts be fair, and how was it that the king and his representatives seemed to be doing extra well?

The American Bar Association and the state bars have work to do. They have the ability to sanction, suspend, and disbar bad actors. They have the power to say things publicly that need to be said.

They should be commending the lawyers who left the Justice Department rather than carry out orders they believed were corrosive. They should be outraged at how the legal system is being manipulated.

Do something now before it’s too late.

Good grief. A Justice Department lawyer stood before a federal appeals panel this week and argued that if the government bulldozes the Statue of Liberty fast enough, we might have no standing to stop it. The case is really pointing toward Trump tearing down the East Wing for a now reported $900 million dollar ballroom.

Move fast and break things and someone else will pay for it is the doctrine of a regime that has worked out that the law only binds the people who wait for permissions. Notice it each day with new edicts, orders, and conspiracies being continually pushed.

Try and see it.

This is a listen that made me decide to cancel my PayPal account, and I’m still thinking about the story. Gil Duran on Fresh Air, laid out in his new book The Nerd Reich, how Silicon Valley came to love an obscure book called The Sovereign Individual.

This book predicted that digital currency and automation would dissolve nation states and leave behind a group of elite, wealthy men positioned to profit from the wreckage. Peter Thiel has credited that book as one of the reasons he started PayPal.

I found myself listening with suspicion, but growing intrigue. I don’t typically adhere to conspiracies. Duran the author built the whole thing out of his subjects own books, blogs, and speeches, and then none of the men agreed to sit for an interview.

Just a weird and unsettling read.

You may want to pair it with George Packer's May conversation on how the tech right got rich aligning itself with MAGA.

Senator Tommy Tuberville

Senator Coach’s response was that Democrats had just voted to send a terrorist to the Senate. He didn’t say anything about policy, about Medicare for All, or supporting the military. A sitting United States senator looked at a lawfully nominated American citizen and decided that calling him a terrorist, because he knew the man's religion and his name could gain a certain kind of attention, was what was needed.

Pathetic? Nancy Mace went further and described every Muslim holding office in this country as a threat to the republic. Bill Cassidy condemned the language on Sunday morning, but his damage has already been done.

Denise Cheung

Chief, Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia

I requested a photo of Denise Cheung to use but have so far not been able to get one. This public servant spent 24 years at the Justice Department, through administrations of both parties, running the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington. She was told to open a grand jury investigation into an EPA clean energy contract and to order a bank to freeze the money. The evidence offered for it included a Project Veritas video. She and the other white collar prosecutors looked at what they had and concluded the threshold for a grand jury had not been met.

So she said no.

She was asked for her resignation that day.

Part of why she refused was to keep the work off the desks of those below her. She took the hit so they would not have to. Her last letter to the office told them to keep pursuing justice without fear or prejudice, and to take care of themselves.

Sometimes you have to seek discomfort to do the right thing.

Know a public servant who deserves this space? Reply to this email and tell me about them. The clerk, the inspector, the caseworker. Especially the ones nobody thanks.

Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death

Irvin D. Yalom, M.D. · Jossey-Bass, 2009

I carried this one through Japan. A few pages on the plane, a few more on the trains, and a few before sleep in rooms where I did not speak the language. It turned out to be the right book for mountain trail evenings and for the spirit of Kyoto. I find myself thinking on the purpose of things many times, and this is the type of book that helps me keep the right perspective.

Yalom is a psychiatrist writing about the one thing none of us gets out of.

His argument is that a great deal of ordinary anxiety is death anxiety/avoidance wearing a disguise, and that the disguise slips in our dreams, when we face an illness, or a birthday with a big number. He wrote it for aspiring therapists. It reads like it was written for the rest of us. Thought provoking, full of insight, and generous in a way books are meant to be. It has been out since 2009, so a used copy runs a few dollars.

The Porcupine Press is a Bookshop.org affiliate. Buying through this link supports independent bookstores and this paper, at no extra cost to you.

Speak to the Wind

Marc J. Yacht

Before you go

My favorite time of the year approaches. A changing of the season and time for deep contemplation through holidays and birthdays. Our kids are pretty much prepped and out the door. Everything from here on out lends itself more to their grit, luck, and general society goodness. Maybe some good karma or hidden blessings as well. All I know is it is a lot quieter around here.

This will also be an extraordinary critical time in our country. Make sure you read, act, vote, and do good trouble. Read something this week that asks a little more of you than a social feed does.

Above all else, be a good human.