October 12, 2007

Professor Bainbridge has some comments ("We are talking about a New York law school hosting a facilitator, aider, and abettor of terrorists who targeted New York", as does alumnus Mitchell Rubinstein of Adjunct Law Prof, who's "disappointed" in his alma mater's invite:

Students do not need to see to see or hear a convicted criminal speak to learn that what she was wrong. Indeed, you do not even have to go to law school to know that! Stewart's attendance does nothing to further the legal profession or legal scholarship.

The New York Law Journal assigned the task of writing up the controversy to a reporter who's also a student at Hofstra Law; the resulting piece does not exactly come across as zealously adversarial toward the position of the Hofstra administration. For two contemporaneous views of Stewart's conviction, see John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum ("Stewart betrayed the criminal defense bar itself. ... because the tapes in Stewart's case showed such awful behavior, it will be harder to criticize the DOJ for taping and prosecuting defense lawyers. Stewart, not Ashcroft's DOJ, is to blame for that. Stewart poisoned the well for other defense lawyers.") and Andrew McCarthy at NRO, her opposite number in the Blind Sheik trial ("I like Lynne Stewart. ... I can feel justice but no joy is seeing her brought low. ...As some of New York City's most distinguished defense professionals explained to the Times after Stewart's conviction, there are lines between proper advocacy and misconduct, and they are well known. Here, Lynne was so far over them that, to be blunt, it is insulting for her and her allies to suggest otherwise.")

Earlier coverage here.