-Caveat Lector-
* * * B A R W A T C H B U L L E T I N * * *
The following is an "open letter" by Professor David Mayer of Capital
University Law School announcing his reasons for quitting his ABA
membership. In the spirit of the kind of continued debate and discussion
we are trying to foster, we reprint it here. Email comments are welcome,
and we hope to have a variety of them to share in next month's email.
Why I've Quit the American Bar Association: An Open Letter to the Law
School Community
The American Bar Association is the nation's largest lawyer organization,
with approximately one-third of the nearly one million lawyers in America
as its members. For the past 11 years -- ever since I began my law
teaching career -- I have been a member of the ABA. Following the ABA's
annual meeting in Atlanta earlier this month, however, I've decided to
cease being a member.
At one time the American Bar Association 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 Corporation and the National Endowment for
the Arts. Despite protests from many members that its 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
speakers, and its choice of award recipients. This year's annual meeting,
for example, featured a speech by Webster Hubbell and a keynote address by
Bill Clinton -- whose invitation was announced the same week that a federal
judge imposed sanctions on Mr. Clinton 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 disparate treatments of Clinton today and Richard Nixon
in 1973-74, documented by Gerald Walpin in a recent Wall Street Journal
essay ("Lie to a Court, Get Invited to Address the ABA," Aug. 9, 1999), is
itself quite telling about the organization's partisanship.
The ABA's decision to invite Mr. Clinton to speak at this year's annual
meeting is, for me, the final straw. As Walpin notes, the ABA has sent a
message to lawyers that "it is OK to lie and obstruct justice, so long as
you maintain political allies in high places." Even the Washington Post --
hardly a conservative or libertarian paper -- in its August 11
editorial condemned the ABA for "inviting a perjurer to speak to a
professional association of attorneys," noting that this was "a move that
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 N. Mayer
Professor of Law and History
Capital University Law School
303 E. Broad Street
Columbus, OH 43215-3200
Office phone: 614-236-6561
Office FAX: 614-236-6956
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Federalist Society
1015 18th St. NW
Suite 425
Washington, DC 20036
http://www.fed-soc.org
phone: (202) 822-8138
fax: (202) 296-8061
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
DECLARATION DISCLAIMER
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