The Lawyers

On Wednesday, November 14, American lawyers all over the country stood in solidarity with their Pakistani counterparts, marching to courthouses to protest Musharraf's suspension of Pakistan’s constitution, his placing the Pakistani Supreme Court under house arrest, and his jailing of lawyers, judges, and political opponents.

This was the scene here in Seattle:

(© A. Berner / Seattle Times 2007)

On this issue, shanikka wrote a compelling diary titled, 'The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill all the Lawyers'. She eloquently described how, in the face of General Musharraf's most recent attempt to eliminate the rule of law and consolidate power, it was Pakistani lawyers who led the way in standing against the wholesale replacement of constitutional principles with military dictatorship.

It is easy to lose track, amidst the derision, scorn, and lawyer jokes, that attorneys are among the first to observe the real-world effects of an eroding rule of law, and are frequently among the first to protest such infringments.

As shanikka described, Pakistani lawyers led the way starting last March:

Of all the many things that one could say about the sobering -- frightening -- events surrounding the descent of Pakistan in the past four days into martial law and a dictatorship, the one thing you can't say is that General Musharraf and his minions don't know their Shakespeare.

Most folks still think that Dick the Butcher's urging of Henry Cade, the instigator of mob unrest in Henry VI Part II meant that lawyers should get the kibosh generally just because we are pains in the butt.

I concede that some of us can be a pain in the butt.

But many of us are also on the front lines of defense of justice in a free country.  Whether we're talking about ours, or someone else's.

An example of this is now being writ large in Pakistan, where General Pervez Musharraf is systematically installing hand-picked judges to replace those legitimate ones who had the temerity to question the legality of his election.  Replacing them with his hand-picked cronies.

It was the lawyers of Pakistan who first stood up to fight back against the imposition of military dictatorship and destruction of the constitutional rule of law, back in March 2007 when Musharraf fired the country's chief justice.

Photo © New York Times, 2007

Echoing these protests, the American Bar Association issued a call to every lawyer in the United States to demonstrate against Musharraf's actions:

Over the last few days, brave Pakistani lawyers have dressed for work and headed to court knowing that they would be met by policemen’s batons and tear gas instead of their clients. These lawyers went to work anyway because of their belief in the rule of law.

It is time for us to demonstrate that we share Pakistani lawyers’ commitment to justice. Together, we will show that they are not fighting alone.

Although American lawyers have yet to face "policemen’s batons and tear gas" on the way to the courthouse, we nonetheless find ourselves living in a country wherein the current Administration has spent years chipping away at Constitutional rights, the rule of law, and the very fabric of this country:

• Wiretapping millions of American citizens without a court order in violation of FISA and likely the 4th Amendment.
• Claiming the power to ignore duly passed laws such as FISA
• Illegally detaining and imprisoning American citizens without cause for indefinite periods of time
• Preventing detainees from receiving due process and legal representation
• Torturing prisoners
• Gutting Habeus Corpus
• Lying to Congress, the American people, and the entire world in order to start a war with Iraq
• Bankrupting the country for generations to come
• Deliberately exposing a covert CIA officer because her husband challenged the Administration's lies about Iraq
• Firing U.S. Attorneys who refuse to gin up false indictments of Democrats
• Ruining important federal health and safety agencies by placing incompetents and ideologues in charge
• Letting an entire American city be destroyed and declining to rebuild it

No, we don't have in this country a decree overtly "suspending" the Constitution. We don't have mass beatings, arrests, and imprisonment of lawyers, judges, and political opponents.

The track record of Bush administration, however, is both alarming and horrifying, to say the least.

For all of these reasons, many attorneys here in Seattle and all over the country marched in solidarity with Pakistani attorneys to support the rule of law:

(© A. Berner / Seattle Times 2007)

It was a truly amazing scene, one that gives me a great deal of hope for the future of this country. I'm going to second shanikka's suggestion in the closing paragraph of her diary:

So the next time you get the opportunity hug a laywer.  Especially a public interest lawyer.  She or he might just be the one who threatens to throw eggs someday if anyone tries here what they are (sadly) succeeding with in Pakistan right now.