January 17, 2007

Charles Fried, in an W$J op-ed on the Guantanamo representation flap:

It is too bad that lawyers in this country feel bound not only to submit the best possible arguments for their clients -- virtuous or deplorable -- but also to stump for them in the press, before legislative bodies and in professional organizations. Debate in the American Bar Association and American Law Institute, for instance, has been degraded in recent years by their members carrying their representation of their clients' interest into fora in which their best independent expert judgment is asked for. How unfortunate that in this country we have plaintiffs' lawyers and defendants' lawyers, lawyers who represent only unions and others who represent only management. One looks with nostalgia at the British bar, where barristers will prosecute one day and defend the next.