Subscribe to Breaking NewsRuby-Sachs: Ken Starr’s Ethics
I’ve been reading a lot about the ethical obligations of lawyers (I’m actually taking the Ontario bar exam as you read this – wish me luck) and I am outraged by Kirkland and Ellis and Ken Starr.
As a lawyer there are certain things you are supposed to understand. First, your title lends a certain authority to everything you do or say publicly and so your actions should not bring the profession into disrepute. Second, you are an agent of the court and must, above all else, ensure that dishonesty does not enter the courtroom.
But, when a lawyer adopts an ideological position, signs on to unscientific studies about a minority group and then propagates those lies in the public forum, he has certainly brought the practice of law into disrepute.
There are many lawyers who are crusaders for social causes. In fact, some of the most heroic people I know work in legal clinics that serve underprivileged populations or take on constitutional challenges with the ACLU. But in doing so, it is important that the social cause not interfere with the obligation to be objective, committed to the rule of law and impartial during negotiations and advocacy. It might be a profession full of fighters, but it is most certainly always supposed to be a fair fight.
In the Proposition 8 hearings, Starr did not deviate from the truth. At least his oral arguments related mostly to precedents about revisions vs. amendments. However, the HRC reports that Starr has also made public statements about how gay relationships endanger children. This kind of misinformation is far from the objective and honest approach we should all expect from well respected advocates.
Starr may be an excellent oral advocate. And he is a lawyer who has significant power in the world of American politics. But he is also a liar. And that is something the legal profession should not tolerate.
What RLH said. I might add that this is a very sloppily written post – it is only at the end that we learn the blogger is not challenging Starr’s in court statements (he “did not deviate from the truth”) only something the HRC claims he said in some other unnamed venue. Pretty tenuous no? Also, I would never want my clients to think I was impartial in negotiations and advocacy – they want me to be on their side. There are a lot of reasons why I might try to be temperate in my arguments and hew to at least a defensible version of the truth, but some naive view that I should fight “fair” isn’t one of them. As a public defender (and a gay man) I regard with great distaste attempts to cast aspersions on attorneys who argue difficult or distasteful positions. It is our job, and for many of us it is a calling.
I have no doubt that if Ms Ruby-Sachs becomes a lawyer she will become more measured in her sense of the ethical implications of vigorous advocacy.
As a Californian, a lawyer, an opponent of prop 8 and a gay (well, bi) man, I have to disagree with this post pretty strongly. Moral abhorrence at a perceivedly unpopular (or, to you, unacceptable) viewpoint is not the same as an ethiclal lapse, and any good lawyer knows that.
Ken Starr’s clients, repugnant as they are, are entitled to the same zealous representation that, say, Charles Manson got (one of the most gracious bits of legal writing you’ll ever see is Vince Bugliosi, in Helter Skelter, applauding the vigrorous defense attorneys he faced in the Manson case). Starr’s out-of-court comments, when not acting as a lawyer, likewise are, however odious, protected speech.
We as proponents of equal rights for gays and lesbians may be on the right side of history and morality (as I firmly believe), but that doesn’t give a monopoly on virtue, or a right to silence anyone in the marketplace of ideas. Liars come and go. The job of those happily possessed of the truth (as we see it) is to counter their lies at every turn – not to try to use the mechanisms of the state (whether explicitly or indirectly through state bar associations) to silence those whose opinions we find offensive. The same tactic can (and in fact is more likely to be) used against us in our turn, by the reactionaries who oppose equlaity and don’t want to hear anything about their moral blind spots. Don’t muzzle kan Starr, under the pretense of a bar ethics claim or otherwise. Challenge him, give his weak pseudo logic no rest, tear his argument apaert bit by bloody bit, until the hypocrisy and bankruptcy of his position stands exposed so all the world can see it. Then, the essentially decent mass of str straight electorate wil lrecognize how shameful his position is, and our victory will move forward.
say what you will about Starr, but leave K&E out of it. he didn’t represent the prop 8 people as part of his affiliation with K&E … why do they matter in any of this?
I’m not even gonna touch this one. Lawyers telling lies? Waaayyy to easy.
If lying is cause for disbarment, then all the lawyers at American Center for Law and Justice and Thomas More Center should be disbarred.