Ethical Duties Should Usurp Ordinary Injustice
I was disappointed in reviewer Leonard Becker’s perceived attitude
of acceptance, or resignation, with regard to the failings of defense
lawyers, prosecutors, and judges in the administration of criminal justice
as described in his review of Amy Bach’s Ordinary Injustice:
How America Holds Court, which appeared in the December 2009 issue
of Washington Lawyer. For more than 40 years, every authoritative
study has described the criminal justice system as being in a state
of crisis.
I would have expected Becker, former District of Columbia bar counsel, to insist that all of the participants respect their ethical obligations. These include refusing to proceed with prosecuting, defending, and adjudicating when to do so requires lawyers and judges to violate their ethical duties as well as the constitutional rights of those who are accused.
Acting like professionals would, at the least, maintain the ethical and constitutional values we proclaim in Law Day addresses and after-dinner bar speeches, but that we have been satisfied to ignore in practice.
In addition, as Becker recognizes, “the criminal justice system would collapse.” So much the better. The administration of justice has long been in a state of collapse—a fact that we lawyers and judges have been covering up by maintaining a pretense of ethical conduct and due process of law. As a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justice once told me, the only way to force real reform is to bring down the system. Nothing short of that will command the attention of the media, the public, and public officials as well as force the allocation of resources that are necessary if we are to live up to our professional and constitutional claims.
—Monroe H. Freedman
Hofstra University Law Professor
Georgetown Law Center Visiting Professor
Jacob and Milton: Two Men, One Lasting Impression
At about 6:30 a.m., as I thumbed through the November 2009 issue of
Washington Lawyer, I settled on “President Roosevelt Takes
a Ride Up 5th Street,” another piece in the mountain of evidence
that Jake Stein is a treasure, our treasure, my treasure.
In this lovely story, Jake introduces Milton S. Kronheim. In 1952, when I was 11 years old, my father took me to 16th and Kennedy streets to meet Milt and see “his” ballgame. It turned out that on that Sunday morning, a Washington Post photographer named Charles Del Vecchio took a picture of all of the assembled ballplayers, and Milt told my father to get himself and me into the picture, which soon ran in the paper with a long article about Milt and the game that would never end, so long as he was around.
At his V Street plant, that picture was among the hundreds that hung on the wall leading to the dining room where, on Thursdays, Washington’s bigwigs would assemble for lunch. Milt let me attend on a few occasions, and I dined and conversed with the Red Auerbachs, the Dave Bazelons, and the Bill Douglases of that era. Law, per se, was not discussed, and certainly not cases, but issues and sports were another matter. Food, wisdom, and wit were plentiful. No one needed to say what was implicit—that what was said there stayed there.
Milt got me into the game that Sunday as a pinch runner, and I showed up for just about every game thereafter, at first riding my bike from my home on 30th Place, down Military Road and, depending on how I felt, either up Snake Hill right into the ballfields at Carter Barron Ampitheatre or up Missouri Avenue and down 16th to Kennedy Street. I loved to bike and then fly over the hump that separated the fields from the sidewalk.
When I became a “regular,” I always played on the team
opposing Kronheim’s. That “good local pitcher” that
Jake referred to in his November article was Aaron Silverman, who pitched
in the minor leagues. There were other minor leaguers in the game, along
with at least one player, a left fielder, who played in the major leagues
for a short while.
Milton and Jake typify an era that has gone with the wind. Jake has the stories; he, too, is my friend. I soon will be gone and my hope is that during the lives of my children, there will be a Jake Stein for them to treasure. He and his stories are like magnets that pull us back to feelings and thoughts that, like a walk in the woods, burrow through our hard crust and force us to recall that we are, most importantly, simply people on a ride in space—a short ride—looking for and sometimes attaining friendship and love.
Thank God for Jake.
—Julian Tepper
Placitas, New Mexico
A Hypothetical Rooted in Reality
In response to the December 2009 cover story “The Future of Affirmative
Action,” here are two hypothetical test questions that illustrate
the fairness and wisdom of current laws barring the use of tests to
deny employment or educational opportunities.
Question One: A deuce-and-a-quarter is:
