Vet Your Lawyer

Editorial – A Political Attack on Guantánamo Lawyers – NYTimes.com.

An excellent defense of a beleaguered profession. There are, of course, many things wrong with the legal profession, but that is beside the point here. Those things do not include giving all people their right to a defense. It is precisely because they are unpopular that they need all their rights protected, since the temptation to rush to judgement or use their unpopularity as a weapon to silence or imprison them is strong everywhere and common in many countries. That they may actually be innocent of the crimes charged becomes a minor, if not irrelevant, detail. Attacking lawyers, then, becomes the next best thing; a way to discourage the unpopular from getting competent help, or even worse, found innocent and exposing the corruption that tried to railroad them in the first place. America is nowhere near as bad as many countries when it comes to political trials, but that’s not to say that the right isn’t trying. This is why the founders, hardly left wing radicals but then King George might disagree, put these provisions into the Constitution in the first place, to guard against our own prejudices – or those of the powerful.