Speakers included leaders from Boies Schiller Flexner and Lawyers for Good Government
Speak Up for Justice held a national forum earlier today October 23 entitled “Judges Under Siege – Lawyers Speak Up.”
The forum tackled personal attacks on the US judiciary and the US Supreme Court’s emergency docket. Speakers included legal leaders from Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, Glaser Weil, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, and Lawyers for Good Government.
Boies Schiller Flexner founding chairman David Boies focused on how attacks on the judiciary hindered the preservation of the rule of law.
“This is not just criticism of judges' decisions. It's personal attacks on individual judges. It is sometimes threats against the judges. It is sometimes threats to ignore decisions. More than anything else, we as lawyers know how wrong those attacks are more than anyone else, because lawyers know how those attacks undermine the rule of law by undermining the independent judiciary, on which the rule of law depends,” he said at the forum, which was held online. “Doesn't mean that criticisms of judicial opinions are out of bounds; it means these kinds of attacks on judges and threats to judges, threats to disregard decisions, are wrong.”
Boies emphasized the need for nonpartisanship in the law, particularly with regard to the judicial confirmation process.
“I think that the brutalization of the confirmation process and the political attacks that start right then, I think is part of the problem. And I think that human nature being what it is, I think that process can radicalize people,” he warned.
Boies Schiller Flexner partner Steve Zack, who once presided over the American Bar Association and the Florida Bar, added that there was a “policy of intimidation to intimidate lawyers, to intimidate judges, and to intimidate the use of the Constitution to defend your rights.”
“The overarching message from the government is: ‘don't exercise your constitutional rights or we're coming after you’,” he said. “We're talking about First Amendment rights—we say, ‘What the heck is that?’ Right? ‘What's a First Amendment right?’ Well, we say, how about if we have your parents go into your room and look around, take anything they think is abusive, and put you under surveillance for the next 30 days. They understand that. They understand how it affects them, so we have to bring it down to a basic level that will be appreciated by the people who we rely on, and that's the future of our country.”
Criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos highlighted the US Supreme Court’s emergency docket, which he said had impacted district court judges.
“A shadow docket is basically you don't set it for briefing, you don't set it for oral argument, you don't have the usual kinds of guardrails that you have. You don't let it work up through and kind of do what we as lawyers are used to. You have somebody issue orders, a lot of times without any kind of context as to what the reasoning is, and what that ends up doing is nobody understands why, including the district court judges,” he explained.
Speak Up for Justice founder and attorney Paul Kiesel pointed out that district court judges would struggle to follow the suggestions of unsigned orders issued in such dockets.
Glaser Weil litigation chair and business/entertainment trial lawyer Patricia Glaser called on lawyers to spearhead the conversation about democracy. Lawyers Defending American Democracy executive director Lauren Stiller Rikleen detailed a new initiative by the organization called “Meeting the Moment, A Call for Lawyers to Lead.”
“This initiative is based on an essential premise: there's an urgent need for every American to understand that the issues we are addressing—rule of law, democracy, the justice system—affect every one of us, and we believe that lawyers are the trusted voices in their communities with special training and communication skills who can and must be leaders to help both their colleagues and the public understand why they cannot stay silent now,” Rikleen said. “I can't believe that every single person in this country doesn't believe in due process… and the notion that any of this is partisan is kind of beyond me at this point. We are living through unprecedented times. We are seeing things happening in the destruction of our government and our democracy that has never been seen at this scale, certainly in our lifetimes in this country.”
Lawyers for Good Government founder and executive director Traci Feit Love shared the organization’s efforts to help US citizens defend their constitutional and civil rights.
“There are so many people and so many communities in need of representation right now, and we need to make sure that every lawyer who has the skills and who has the capabilities to make a difference in that fight has the administrative support and the logistical support to be able to help defend those individuals,” Love said.
The “Judges Under Siege – Lawyers Speak Up" forum was attended by over 10,000 lawyers, judges, and US citizens.
