And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Sun, 04 Apr 1999 09:37:25 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Bruce Clark disbarred
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April 04, 1999
Rogue lawyer runs out of arguments
Bruce Clark's in-your-face fight for native rights has lead the
once-acclaimed legal mind to be found guilty of 'conduct unbecoming of a
solicitor.' Paul McKay reports.
Paul McKay
The Ottawa Citizen
Bruce Clark, the renegade lawyer who spent two decades cultivating militant
native clients across Canada with arguments dating back to the 1700s, has
used up his ninth legal life. Ten days ago, he was disbarred in Ontario.
The ruling effectively kills the Canadian
courtroom career of the only lawyer on the planet to combine a banker's
suit, PhD, conehead haircut, Star Wars glasses, and
self-penned writs to arrest judges hearing his cases.
A disciplinary panel, reviewing Mr. Clark's 1997 convictions for
contempt of court and resisting a police officer (during a court
hearing for five charged in the 1995 Gustafsen Lake armed
stand-off in British Columbia) found him ungovernable and guilty of
"conduct unbecoming a barrister and solicitor."
The Law Society of Upper Canada panel also cited scathing accounts of his
courtroom conduct from Supreme Court Justice Antonio Lamer, a dismal
0-for-40 record in native land claim cases he argued, his 16-month flight
from Canada while facing criminal charges, and his claim that virtually all
of Canada's judges, police and governments are guilty of treason and
genocide against native peoples. But in the murky world of guerrilla
politics, Mr. Clark's disbarment may
enhance his hallowed status among a minority of native activists. A
self-declared exile and "fugitive for justice" who moved to the rural town
of Granville, New York, last year, he refused to attend his Ontario
disbarment hearing.
Instead, he filed a sheaf of papers constituting what one respected
aboriginal historian has called "a never-ending argument in search of a
client." They relate to a 1704 British Privy Council judgment on the
legality of land expropriations against the Mohegan Indians in what was
then the British colony of Connecticut. It ruled that British colonial
courts were intrinsically biased against aboriginal peoples in land claims
cases, and that just decisions could only
be made by a special constitutional court created in the name of the Queen
of England.
That court was never convened. The Mohegans lost their land. And the 1704
Privy Council ruling was decisively forgotten as the British colonized much
of North America during the next two centuries.
Mr. Clark, who unearthed the case during research for his PhD in law in
Scotland, immediately seized on the potential legal implications: much of
North America may have been illegally seized from aboriginal peoples. And
if that were established as a matter of law, native treaties, forced
reservation status, and land claim settlements covering most of the
continent and hundreds of native bands, were potentially void. It was an
argument many aboriginal leaders wanted to hear. Mr. Clark quickly gained
near-celebrity status on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border for his
startling legal discovery. Many were impressed by his flashes of legal
brilliance, personal charm, and unwavering commitment to native rights. He
is the author
of two authoritative books on aboriginal law.
Even his critics agree he gave up a lucrative law practice, huge home and
private airplane in the 1970s to champion the native cause -- at one time
from the very log cabin the Indian imposter Grey Owl used as part of his
own mythology. Since 1995, Mr. Clark, his wife Margaret, three children and
a menagerie of pets have lived in impoverished circumstances, often
smuggled like illegal aliens into native villages from northern New
Brunswick to the B.C. coast.
But some native rights activists and native lawyers who were once allies of
Mr. Clark became adversaries after he repeatedly lost land claim cases,
ignited courtroom fracases, and aligned himself with militants who set up
armed barricades and attempted to serve subpoenas, make arrests or seize
historical documents in the name of "aboriginal courts" conceived by Mr.
Clark.
The more charitable critics say Mr. Clark is the biggest liability to the
legal merits of the 1704 case because that message has become inseparable
from an obsessive, in-your-face messenger with a taste for martyrdom. "A
lot of aboriginal people agree with his arguments, but not with his
tactics," says David Nahwegahbow, an Anishnabe (Ojibway) lawyer in Ottawa
who is president of the Indigenous Bar Association of Canada. "He hurts the
arguments in the long run. He has divided communities." Those less
charitable say his embattled image and charismatic promises of sweeping
legal victories have derailed a dozen land claim settlements -- and helped
escalate land-claim legal costs in Canada -- by splitting native band
loyalties and triggering competing claims. Recently, he filed a surprise
case on behalf of a dissident native faction in northern Ontario. The 1704
case is cited as the leading legal grounds for the lawsuit. It pits Mr.
Clark and a militant minority against the Ontario and federal governments
-- as well as the elected Longlac chief and council. "He's a dangerous
item. He ends up creating internal turmoil. That's happened like clockwork
in every community he's gone to," says Peter Di Gangi, an Ottawa-based
researcher and policy analyst who has advised native groups across Canada
since 1981. Several have been convulsed with bitter in-fighting triggered
by Mr. Clark's tactics, he says. "He's been bad for public optics, for
(native) relations with governments, and for native communities themselves.
Whenever he leaves, there's a mess to clean up."
The bottom line, Mr. Nahwegahbow says, is that Mr. Clark hasn't won a
single land claim case on behalf of native clients during the past two
decades. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Canada's landmark Delgamuukw
decision has affirmed aboriginal rights to self-government and land use
across Canada -- and effectively achieved much of what Mr. Clark's native
apostles could have hoped to attain from a favourable ruling on the 1704
Connecticut case. Ironically, Mr. Clark once briefly represented one of the
75 Gitskan chiefs who
fought the Delgamuukw case through two decades of setbacks and appeals
before the Supreme Court ruled in their favour. Stuart Rush, an aboriginal
lawyer in Vancouver who was lead counsel on the case, says he and native
leaders were appalled by Mr. Clark's guerrilla tactics. "We were arguing
the case at appeal when Bruce Clark showed up, out of the blue, and
purported to arrest the four Appeal Court judges for genocide and crimes
against aboriginal people," recalls Mr. Rush. "One judge ordered him taken
away by the bailiff. We will never know what effect that had (the appeal
was lost, but superseded by the Supreme Court decision), but it sure left a
bad impression."
Mr. Rush contends that Canadian courts at all levels have properly
dismissed Mr. Clark's 1704 legal argument, because it demands that
aboriginal title claims be adjudicated at a non-existent court in England
-- and ignores the Canadian Constitution. "His whole argument is misplaced
and wrong in law. Canada is the only place
this can be settled. Yet some of his native clients have gone to jail
because of a vain, discreditable argument. He wasn't helping them." Mr.
Clark also argued -- and lost -- the original Temagami land claim case in
northern Ontario. He left after new lawyers were hired to salvage the land
claim on appeal, then returned to advise a small faction of militant
dissidents to pursue a competing land claim case. It has gone nowhere. So
have attempts to win similar land claim efforts in the Maritimes, northern
Quebec, the upper Ottawa valley, British Columbia, and in the U.S.
In September 1995, Mr. Clark finally got a chance to argue his 1704 case at
the Supreme Court of Canada. He used most of 45 minutes to excoriate Chief
Justice Lamer -- and the Canadian judicial system -- for fraud,
chicanery,treason and genocide. It took a mere two minutes for the court to
dismiss his case. "I must say, Mr. Clark, that in my 26 years as a judge I
have never heard anything so preposterous and presented in an unkind way,"
said Chief Justice
Lamer. "To call the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada and the 975 High
Court judges of Canada accomplices to genocide is something preposterous. I
do not accept that and think you are a disgrace to the bar. The various
documents filed in this court, the Supreme Court of British Columbia, and
the Court of Appeal are, in large part, an utter farrago of nonsense."
Only three days later, Mr. Clark burst into a courtroom in north central
British Columbia, pushing a cart laden with papers relating to the 1704
case. He demanded to represent five native people charged in the Gustafsen
Lake standoff. When the judge resisted his arguments, Mr. Clark threw a
stack of legal papers at him, and was tackled by police while condemning
the hearing as a "kangaroo court." That scene triggered charges of
contempt and resisting arrest. Mr. Clark fled Canada for Amsterdam, where
he publicly vowed never to return. (Sixteen months later he returned to
Canada. He was convicted on both charges, lost an appeal on the contempt
charge, and was sentenced to three months in jail).
Improbably, his fugitive status increased his cachet among some militant
natives, but also within pockets of arch-conservative, anti-government
activists such as Parliament Hill crusader Glen Kealey and white
supremacist defender Doug Christie. The 1995 criminal charges were laid
against Mr. Clark two months after a
disciplinary panel of the Law Society of Upper Canada recommended that he
be disbarred for professional conduct charges dating back to 1992. The
evidence in that hearing was virtually identical to that used in the 1999
hearing in which he lost his legal licence to practice.
But in 1995, Mr. Clark had an extraordinary ally in Clayton Ruby, a
left-wing Toronto lawyer and native rights advocate. He almost
single-handedly reversed the initial Law Society recommendation, defending
Mr. Clark as a merely over-zealous champion of an oppressed native
minority. Mr. Ruby co-authored a report which concluded that while Mr.
Clark was guilty on three counts of
professional misconduct, he deserved only a formal reprimand.
"I read that report carefully," says Mr. Di Gangi, who works directly with
native groups across Canada. "Clayton Ruby didn't look at the damage Mr.
Clark did to the communities. He ignored the impacts on (Mr. Clark's) own
native clients." Nevertheless, Mr. Ruby's defence of Mr. Clark was adopted
by the Law Society governors. Then Mr. Clark refused to appear for his
reprimand, leaving no doubt in letters to the Law Society that he was
resolutely unrepentant. That prompted a new Law Society panel to review his
case and overturn the 1995 reversal engineered by Mr. Ruby, an influential
Law Society governor.
Mr. Clark, who could not be contacted for a Citizen interview, still has no
apparent misgivings about the scrappy tactics, courtroom confrontations and
single-minded conviction which has underpinned his crusade. In a final
letter to the Law Society he concluded:
"I really don't belong with your crowd. I have nothing further to say. I am
content with the matter being disposed of in absentia. I have no further
desire to appear before the committee. I am asking this committee of its
own motion to recommend that (the Law Society governors) commission an
inquiry of the Law Society's ongoing treason and fraud and complicity in
genocide."
Paul McKay is a Citizen reporter. His e-mail address is:
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A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks, Creator
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