It's a pretty cool thing to be a lawyer. I hear quite a few lawyer jokes, but Chief Justice Durham of the Utah Supreme Court said that when a doctor tells her a lawyer joke she makes this response: "While YOUR predecessors [doctors] were still treating people with cobwebs and leeches, MY predecessors [lawyers] were writing the Declaration of Independence." Good point.
One of the great examples, to me, of a revolutionary lawyer fighting for the rule of law is John Adams. John Adams defended the soldiers accused of killing colonists in the Boston Massacre because no one else would do it. Adams later wrote of his defense "It was . . . one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country." He believed that sentencing the soldiers to death without a fair trial would have been "as foul a Stain upon this Country as the Executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently."
The crisis in Pakistan this week makes me particularly proud to be a lawyer. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suspended the Pakistani Constitution on Saturday and fired the Chief Justice of the country's Supreme Court. He also fired any judge who refused to take a new oath. Pakistani lawyers have been a major part of the protests against Musharref's latest actions and many have been clubbed or arrested while protesting.I hope that I can be a little bit like the Pakistani lawyers protesting this week and the lawyers who helped found the United States. To me being a lawyer means helping people to understand the law and, occasionally, standing up for the rule of law when it is under attack.
1 comment:
i really like the idea of "bleebing." it just works.
(this is Marci Chapman, your neighbor, by the way...)
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