Posts like this make me think dave is from a different planet than the rest of us.
Washington Post: “The Pentagon yesterday disavowed a senior official’s remarks suggesting companies boycott law firms that represent detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”
To be clear, what the official did is a breach of everything that we hold sacred in our legal system. It reeks of totalitarianism.
The official utilized his First Amendment right to suggest that consumers refrain from supporting businesses that engage in business practices that they find objectionable. What a fascist asshole.
If this official suggested that we boycott firms which support the government’s position on Guantanamo Bay, it would’ve been garnered bold letters and praise.
Does “fascist asshole” refer to the fascist asshole that works for the DOD, or were you claiming to being a fascist asshole yourself. If the latter, please provide your mailing address. We’d liketo send you a card, so you can claim to be a Card-Carrying Fascist Asshole, a title you richly deserve.
People who object to the legal representation of criminal suspects are expressing a view completely antithetical to freedom, Eye. A public official who believes that the defense of a terror suspect is objectionable should move to North Korea where he’d be more at home.
But, were you to read the man’s actual statement, you would (or should) understand that he was not saying that they should not be defended, only that the companies essentially footing the bill for the pro bono work should be aware of it and decide accordingly. That is how capitalism works. You can vote with your dollars.
If that dollar-voting leaves gaps in protections or rights (as it often does) that’s when the government steps in to fill those gaps.
Nobody is entitled to a high-powered biglaw attorney.
So what you’re suggesting, Eye, would be that the Pro-Bono work should stop so the taxpayers can have to foot the full hourly rate of the law firms to represent these alleged terrorists? Perhaps Gideon v. Wainwright would make for good reading.
Bring on the Internet Lawyers. What I’m suggesting, Confused, is as follows:
Gideon actually makes my point quite nicely. The Court held that access to counsel is a fundamental right. Therefore, per that holding, if pro bono work stopped, an accused would not go lawyerless. Instead, the defendant would just have one provided to them by the government.
There are, of course, other issues in play when you talk about the legal status of Gitmo detainees, alleged enemy combatants, etc… but regardless of those, voting with your feet and dollars can never be antithetical to freedom because they are, in fact, merely an expression of opinion and an illustration of freedom.
If the result of that economic democratic process is that a class of people have their rights trampled, then that is a failing of our government, not of the people who voiced their economic opinion. Our system and government should not count on pro bono work and charitible consumers to ensure the rights of the people, they should be guaranteed in all circumstances.
This is not really pertinent to the discussion at hand, but I can’t resist:
“taxpayers can have to foot the full hourly rate of the law firms to represent these alleged terrorists”
This statement is either highly disingenuous, or indicative of a special kind of ignorance of our legal system that really shouldn’t be eminating from a law.xxxx.edu hostname.
The government doesn’t pay firms to represent indigent defendants. They hire their own attorneys, at government wages, to do it.
“Nobody is entitled to a high-powered biglaw attorney.”
Surely you would agree that the detainees at Gitmo, given their unique status among prisoners held by the U.S., would require legal representation that’s far beyond the capabilities of the average attorney.
I’m not sure if that’s true or not. There are some interesting and novel issues, although most of them are more political than legal, and it certainly doesn’t take a brilliant legal mind to grasp them.
Anyone who needs an attorney would benefit from having a better one, although I’m not convinced that the gitmo detainees need better attorneys in order for their rights to be protected. In fact, their unique status may make the quality of their attorneys less relevant to the actual disposition of their cases…
By that I mean that, given the nature of the cases that will come before the courts, it’s likely that the appellate/supreme courts are going to do what they want, regardless of what arguments are made by the respective sides. We’ve definitely seen that in past Gitmo cases.
And we’re also making an assumption that a person is a better attorney simply because they work at a big firm, which simply isn’t the case.
…although I still believe that none of this is really the issue:
If the attorneys that the government provides are not good enough then it’s still a failure of the government that needs to be fixed at the government level, not at the market level.
And I still don’t believe that someone encouraging individuals to express their political interests by voting with their feet and dollars can be “totalitarian”. Indeed, the very nature of the statement indicates political and economic freedom.
Now, if Dave had said “I think those of us who want Gitmo detainees to have high-priced biglaw attorneys should patronize the firms that are doing the pro-bono work” I’d have agreed wholeheartedly with him.
What the guy said was reprehensible, even if he had said it as a private citizen, which he did not. He is an employee of the people, we pay his salary, and he almost certainly took an oath to uphold the Constitution. The tactic he used is exactly the kind of tactic they use in totalitarian states.
Unsurprisingly there are a lot of folks missing the real issue in the same way that Dave did.
If you cannot answer this question, you do not understand the problem:
How is what he said any different from “If you do not like the fact that Company X does Behavior Y, you should consider not purchasing their goods or services.”
Once you see that there is no difference, you see that the real question is this: What is wrong with encouraging people to exercise their dollar-vote in a way consistent with their own political beliefs?
As extra credit: would you have felt any better about his statements if he said: “Companies should consider not giving their business to law firms who DON’T do pro-bono work for gitmo detainees because it makes the US look bad and hurts us in overseas markets.”
If you believe that statement is better, I think it’s a fair conclusion to reach that we shouldn’t care what this one guy said and we should, instead, be focusing our debate on the actual detainees and their legal representation, instead of using some official’s statements as a proxy for it.
What’s more important, Eye — the principle of consumer choice or civil liberties? Personally, as much as I like being able to vote with my dollars, I don’t rank that quite as high in the grand experiment of American democracy as the right to a fair trial.
That’s a false dichotomy, Rogers — that’s not a choice we need to make.
BECAUSE, once again, it is the federal and state governments’ jobs to ensure the right to a fair trial, not the consumers’. If those governments fail, they should be checked and restrained through the proper channels (elections, judicial, etc…).
That said, one of the great benefits of economic choice is that you can, if you so choose, spend your money in a way that encourages certain political ideals — whichever ones you want to encourage. We all should want defendants to have the best possible lawyers, but that is not required of us (how “free” would we be if we were required to believe in certain things?).
If there was any sort of reasonable basis for a business to assume that this official’s statement meant that they would have a hard time getting government contracts based on what firms they hire, then I would agree (absent a vote to that effect by congress) that this statement was out of line.
In reality, though, all he did was a) remind consumers that they can choose to (or not to) patronize certain businesses, and b) reminded businesses that their political exploits are subject to the will of the people insomuch as the people are willing to vote with their dollars.
Neither of those things are in any way inconsistent with freedom. Quite to the contrary.
…I’ll add, for completeness, that if a particular firm is worried that they might lose business based on their pro-bono work, whatever it is, they should either a) quit doing it or b) find clients that are more in-step with the firms political goals… not complain about the person who reminded consumers that they have a choice.
That’s a false dichotomy, Rogers — that’s not a choice we need to make.
It’s not a dichotomy at all. I didn’t ask you to choose them — I asked which was more important to you.
Er, choose between them.
Which is more important, to me or to anyone, is completely irrelevant, becuase they are mutually compatible.
In fact, the principle of consumer choice (which exists within a right to contract and freely associate) is a civil liberty.