Ramsey Clark & the right to counsel

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 20 13:13:17 PST 2003


Doug produces some curiously illiberal statements below about very bad guys not being entitled to good defenses by lawyers on the political left. He didn't respond to my examples of Tigar (Nichols) and Stewart (Sheik Whosis, the WTC bomber), and in general, although there various work that any lawyer won't do, any lawyer of a lmost any persuasion will disagree with Doug's view. Unlike Nathan, I will defend large corps in who-gets-the-money lawysuits against each other, but like Nathan I will not defend management against unions; unlike some of my colleagues here, I will defend convicted murderers, but I won't do products liability work.

But a political lawyer's job is to defend unpopular principles when emotions are high, and often that occurs with vile clients. My 1A prof., David Goldberg, made his ACLU bones defending the Nazis' right to march in Skokie (where many death camo survivors lived), and I would have been proud to have been on that case. 4A lawyers defend drug dealers, often big bad drug violent thuggish dealers, not the happy candyman Thos. unwisely discussed a few weeks back.

Gotta go now.

jks

Doug says:

I picked Pinochet because it's an instance where there's no question about what he did, he's a very high profile thug, and some people have questioned the legitimacy of his arrest. Legit or not, he's politically odious, and I can't imagine anyone volunteering to defend him except maybe some of my old friends from the Party of the Right.

. . .
>
>

Carrol Cox may think it's
> fine to be
> Goering's lawyer; most of humanity would disagree,
> or at least the
> non-goosestepping portion of humanity.
>
> >Of course RC is not a member of WWP. Why would you
> think he was?
>
> Didn't he get lured into the IAC orbit via the woman
> with the Italian
> name I can't remember who was Sam Marcy's
> amanuensis?
>
> Doug

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