Lawyers, Bush officials quickly disavow Stimson remarks

January 15, 2007

Franklin is reputed to have said that truth wins in a fair fight. In the few days since Charles Stimson suggested the nation’s top lawfirms should not be representing clients being held in detention at Guantanamo Bay, condemnation has been swift, deep and broad. Even Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said lawyers should represent all accused. Perhaps the fight will be fair.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Brian Maka, said Stimson was not speaking for the Bush administration.

Stimson’s comments “do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the thinking of its leadership,” Maka told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Ethics courses, now required at all U.S. law schools, generally spend a great deal of time on the issue of the duty of attorneys to provide representation to all criminal defendants, even and especially those who are unpopular or held in disrepute. Such representation is queried on the ethics exams that all lawyers must take to be licensed.

History offers many examples of lawyers and the difficulties they face in providing such representation: John Adams representing the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre (Adams largely won; eight were tried, six were acquitted, two convicted and branded on their thumbs as punishment); John Quincy Adams representing the men being carried for slave trading aboard the errant Amistad ; Clarence Darrow’s representation of the accused murderers Leopold and Loeb, and other cases. In literature, we get the fictional lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, and the defense team in Inherit the Wind.

Perhaps we should be encouraged at the response to Mr. Stimson’s remarks. A lover of justice might be happier were these defenses of the legal system and the representation of all accused to be more apparently on display from government officials prior to and without such gaffes.

Also see:

Disclosure: A member of my immediate family is employed by Fulbright and Jaworski, one of the firms Mr. Stimson questioned — not in a legal capacity, not in representation of any of the Guantanamo Bay detainees. I was unaware of the firm’s being named by Mr. Stimson at the time of my first post. The views here, of course, should not in any way be construed as representative of any firm named, they are my own views.

2 Comments | 6th Amendment, Democracy, Iraq, Jurisprudence, Justice, War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Pentagon official calls for assault on Constitution

January 13, 2007

I used to marvel at the irony of attending Republican conventions in states and counties across the nation, where ceremonies would open with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag, and the nation, ideals and government it stands for, and where speaker after speaker would then assault every aspect of that same nation and government. In the Vietnam era and a decade afterward, frequently these speeches would include rhetorical questions like, “Do we really need a First Amendment?” in reference to protestors, or the speech of anyone that the speaker found disagreeable.

This is a new height: The New York Times reports this morning that a top Pentagon official is bothered that lawyers defend prisoners in the U.S., especially prisoners at Guantanamo Bay — somehow forgetting that lawyers are obligated to do such things by their ethical canons, their state laws and state licensing rules, and by the Constitution. Then he urges corporations who use those same lawyers to stop paying them.

Is this a joke, or can someone who has sworn to uphold the Constitution actually be so clueless?

The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.

The comments by Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, produced an instant torrent of anger from lawyers, legal ethics specialists and bar association officials, who said Friday that his comments were repellent and displayed an ignorance of the duties of lawyers to represent people in legal trouble.

The Wall Street Journal joined in the assault on the Constitution in an editorial, according to the news story.

Stanley Kubrick is dead, or I’d think that this was just a review of a Stanley Kubrick follow-up to Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb.

Any corporation official who fires the company’s attorneys for representing Guantanamo Bay detainees should be fired himself — he’s acting contrary to the interests of his stockholders in getting rid of the best legal team he could hire.

How do such barbarians an anti-American people get to be officials in the Pentagon, and editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal?

More information:

Blog reactions:

2 Comments | Civil Rights, Current History, Democracy, Dissent, Ethics, Iraq, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, Patriotism, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

For the record: Pearceys’ slam at Judge Jones unwarranted

December 30, 2006

Rick and Nancy Pearcey — she the author of Christian best-seller Total Truth — have a blog called Pro-Existence. A few days ago I stumbled across the blog because they quoted me :

Praise: “University of Chicago geophysicist Raymond Pierrehumbert called Jones’ ruling a ‘masterpiece of wit, scholarship and clear thinking’ while lawyer Ed Darrell said the judge ‘wrote a masterful decision, a model for law students on how to decide a case based on the evidence presented.’ Time magazine said the ruling made Jones one of ‘the world’s most influential people’ in the category of ‘scientists and thinkers.'”

Well, they didn’t quote me directly: They borrowed the quote from a Discovery Institute paper. That’s only significant because such copying is, by their definition, the academic sin of “plagiarizing,” judging from the way they attempt to accuse a federal judge of not doing his duty. (And, if I had to guess, I’d guess they didn’t read the report, but instead copied their stuff from a report in WorldNet Daily — plagiarism of a copy! At least they linked, even if they didn’t attribute, to that publication.)

They borrowed the DI’s criticism of Judge John E. Johns, of the Federal District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, in his decision against a school board’s requiring intelligent design be inserted to the curriculum of the local schools. DI clumsily, and erroneously, labeled the decision a piece of plagiarism.

I wrote a response. The Pearceys have not seen fit to publish it (it’s a closely moderated blog, and apparently anything that they don’t like, or that calls them to Christian task for their errors, doesn’t make it). I post my response to the Pearcey’s below the fold. If they respond here, I won’t censor them.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Accuracy, Creationism, Ethics, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Journalism, Jurisprudence, Plagiarism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bogus claims for intelligent design legal analysis exposed

December 14, 2006

I noted yesterday that the Discovery Institute was banking on ignorance in a recent press release. Such banking can be dangerous — it appears they were overdrawn.

Ed Brayton at Dispatches on the Culture Wars has a thorough Fisking of the Discovery Institute claims today. Also be sure to see this article by Timothy Sandefur, at Panda’s Thumb.

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Bogus history, Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Jurisprudence, Textbooks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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