Firm defending Defense of Marriage Act withdraws from case

But that disturbs me as well. The firm made a commitment and should live up to it. Judges have been know to not allow criminal lawyers from withdrawing from cases.

I still think it taints the legal system. Outside influences should not be brought to bear on a legal proceeding.

What's next? Picketing, harassing, or otherwise intimidating judges?

 

You are treading dangerously close to Sarah Palin territory, i.e. when she whined about her "First Amendment rights" being infringed by media criticism of her.

 

This is parody, right?

 

Yf, you've just discovered that the outside world can make a difference or rear its head in a high-profile case? Were you not paying attention during the Blago trial?

 

We've always lived in a country where there is a "chilling effect" with regards to speech, from the Alien and Sedition Acts when Adams was President, to abolitionists killed and injured, Lincoln suspending habeas corpus rights and on to the enacting of the Sedition Act in 1918.

Not too many people like to defend the unpopular.

 

Isn't that exactly why you should be upset by it?

This case will go forward and they'll have excellent representation. The former Solicitor General will still argue the case as he resigned from the firm.

But, it's precisely the death row inmate that will be hurt by this. It's unpopular litigants with less resources that will be further relegated to second class status within our court system because of this.

And, by granting a victory to the opponents, it will only encourage more of this kind of behavior.

 

I'm actually surprised by both of your responses.

I understand that you may not have sympathy for the firm or the proposed law. But, I would expect both of you to want the Courts to decide it free from outside interference.

 

What "behavior"? Who crossed some line and how so? By criticizing the law firm? Are you saying that people shouldn't physically threaten lawyers who represent unpopular clients? Then I agree with you 100 percent. But when you decide to insert yourself into a politically volatile case, this is part of it.

 

No one is stopping the courts from doing so.

 

How do you feel about threatening a law firms clients with financial peril?

 

Attorneys and law firms weigh the popularity of their clients and the winnability of their cases every day. They are openly criticized in the streets and in the papers and online for whom and what they choose to represent or defend. It was ever thus.

What's risible in this thread is the idea that because someone hurled a harsh word through the window of an upscale law firm hired to defend the indefensible, it constitutes some sort of threat against justice, or chills the impulse to fairness.

That sort of jawboning has gone on from the beginning of time. You noticed it in this case only because the law firm abandoned a hobbyhorse cause of the right under very little actual pressure.

if you want to talk about lawyers who represent unpopular stuff, and receive a steady stream of very real, very violent threats for doing so, talk to the firms and attorneys that represent Planned Parenthood. Or the ACLU. Or the Southern Poverty Law Center.

 

Obviously a physical threat would be a different matter and I don't know of any. But, political pressure, character assassination, interfering with recruitment could be extremely damaging to a law firm.

And, it will just be ratcheted up the next time.

Before John Tower & Robert Bork, confirmation hearings didn't use to be so contentious. In the future, we'll look back at this case as where the pattern of harassing and intimidating lawyers and law firms began.

If a litigant can't hire and retain good counsel, the Court proceeding has already been influenced.