CB
>>> "Nathan Newman" <nathan.newman at yale.edu> 01/06/00 11:42PM >>>
Justin, as someone who is on my way to a law degree, I still side with the people who say that lawyers as a class are scum; just because there is a small group of heroic folks with law degrees trying to undo the damage does not improve the average moral basis of lawyering as an activity. It is prosecutors/lawyers who railroaded Mumia and a hanging judges/lawyers who have kept him and others on death row, while it is corporate lawyers who protect corporate crime and help them rip off the tax code and otherwise loot the public. Even the worst capitalists spend only part of their time thinking about how to screw their workers and destroy the environment, but there are many lawyers who spend 24-7 doing nothing other than defending the most heinous corporate crimes. Its a bit like taking capitalism down to its essence of evil, then billing it out at $350 per hour.
Even within the progressive movement, lawyers are often independent operators who use their access to the state and other resources to wield disproportionate anti-democratic power over the shape of organizing. Because activists and other folks are so easily victimized by the lawyers of the state and corporations, folks may depend on the handful of progressive lawyers to act like heroes for them. But folks rightly resent a legal system that forces them into being such passive victims of such power.
-- Nathan Newman