Copyright 1999 The Columbus Dispatch
The Columbus
Dispatch
October 30, 1999, Saturday
SECTION: EDITORIAL & COMMENT, Pg. 15A
LENGTH: 663 words
HEADLINE:
THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION REPRESENTS QUESTIONABLE VALUES
BODY:
The American Bar Association is the
nation's largest lawyer organization, with approximately one-third of the nearly
1 million lawyers in America as members. Ever since I began my career teaching
law 11 years ago, I have been a member of the ABA. But since the ABA's annual
meeting in Atlanta earlier this month, I've decided to end my membership.
At one time the ABA was an organization truly dedicated to "preserving
liberty, pursuing justice,'' as its current motto states, and to maintaining
"the honor of the profession of law,'' as its constitution states. The ABA's
policy handbook specifies its mission "to increase . . . respect for the law and
to achieve the highest standard . . . of ethical conduct.'' Today, however, the
ABA has betrayed its professed principles. In recent years, the ABA increasingly
has become an advocacy organization for a variety of left-wing political causes,
including: support for race and gender-based affirmative-action programs,
opposition to tort reform, support for federal gun-control measures and
continued federal funding of abortions, universal health insurance and funding
for the Legal Services Corp. and the National Endowment for the
Arts. Despite protests from many members that support for these causes has
nothing to do with the advancement of the legal profession, the ABA has
continued to take official policy stances on such controversial matters.
Moreover, the ABA also has become quite partisan, virtually an organ of
the Democratic Party. This political bias permeates the ABA and its activities;
it is evident in its leadership staff, its programs and its speakers. This
year's annual meeting featured speeches by James Carville and Webster Hubbell
and a keynote address by Bill Clinton, whose invitation was announced the same
week that a federal judge imposed sanctions on him for having given "false,
misleading, and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial
process'' and engaging in "misconduct that undermines the integrity of the
judicial system.''
The ABA's decision to invite Clinton to speak at this
year's annual meeting was, for me, the final straw. As New York attorney Gerald
Walpin noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article, the invitations sent a
message from the ABA to lawyers that "it is OK to lie and obstruct justice. So
long as you maintain political allies, in high places.'' The contrast between
the ABA's treatment of Clinton today and its response to the Watergate scandal
in 1973-74 is itself quite telling about how partisan the organization has
become.
At its annual meeting in August 1973, long before Congress had
concluded its investigation culminating in the adoption of articles of
impeachment against Richard Nixon, the ABA adopted a resolution condemning Nixon
and his colleagues, a number of whom were lawyers, for their role in the
Watergate matter and asking for "prompt and vigorous disciplinary action.''
Among the reasons set forth in that resolution was the Code of Professional
Responsibility, which imposes on lawyers the obligation "to maintain the highest
standards of professional conduct.''
What does the ABA's invitation to
Clinton say about the organization's commitment to that code, which,
incidentally, also mandates that lawyers "shall not . . . engage in conduct
involving dishonesty . . . deceit, or misrepresentation'' nor "engage in conduct
that is prejudicial to the administration of justice''? As The Washington Post
noted in a recent editorial, by "inviting a perjurer to speak to a professional
association of attorneys,'' the ABA's action "could not be better calculated to
entrench the larger public's contempt for lawyers as people who twist the truth
for selfish ends.''
The ABA no longer represents me, nor does it
represent hundreds of thousands of other American lawyers who truly value
liberty, justice and the rule of law.
David Mayer, professor of law
Capital University Law School
Columbus
GRAPHIC: Illustratio
LOAD-DATE: October 31, 1999 
