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As someone who represents “unpopular clients” I would kindly ask the profession to stop using me to justify your amorality. https://twitter.com/orinkerr/status/1326275319192412160
Really, I deeply resent how y’all collapse the thought and care and sacrifice that actual public interest lawyers make in order to be on the right side of justice down to some hollow norm. We don’t want your defense for representing “unpopular clients.” Our clients are rad.
It’s precisely this brand of cynical reductionist norm-crafting that generates resentment and distrust in our system of govt.
Esp when those “neutral” norms work to absolve lawyers of responsibility for their complicity in tearing down the very institution they took an oath to.
Esp when those “neutral” norms work to absolve lawyers of responsibility for their complicity in tearing down the very institution they took an oath to.
Or when, as is usually the case, these norms absolve lawyers of complicity in replacing democratic governance with an elitist neoliberal corporate carceral state.
Yes, you have my scorn for representing trump. And for representing Exxon. And yeah, for putting people in cages.
Yes, you have my scorn for representing trump. And for representing Exxon. And yeah, for putting people in cages.
And if I have your scorn right back for representing the poor and the oppressed, that’s just fine. Why? Because I don’t much care about the opinions of folks who don’t think I’m out here promoting justice. Because I actually am.
This may shock some, but an effective legal system under liberal governance is not, in fact, inconsistent with its participants holding substantive conceptions of the good, with the incorporation of public morals and shared values.
Neutrality is not an ideal. Even for lawyers.
This, for instance, was right of you to do, but not remotely because it’s wrong to go after lawyers. It was right because the villains of this story were the US govt officials who set up an extralegal black site to hold detainees without trials and torture them. https://twitter.com/orinkerr/status/1326276423519072256
