UPDATE: David's federal blog has an excerpt from Roy Black's commencement address to U of M law school. It's worth a read here and fits within the context of this post.
The motto of FACDL (other than the "dues! dues! dues!) is "Liberty's Last Champion."
The motto of FACDL (other than the "dues! dues! dues!) is "Liberty's Last Champion."
Defense attorneys defend the defenseless.
Our tradition is rooted in John Adams, who as a young attorney in Boston defended a group of British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre with killing Boston citizens. Adams defense of the British soldiers was brilliant and it placed Adams' future (including his plans to run for office) in jeopardy. And yet, in the face of public condemnation and personal ruin, Adams vigorously defended his clients, winning most of the cases and setting the tradition for criminal defense lawyers in the United States. There is a John Adams award given annually to a criminal defense attorney who defends a client-usually a high-publicity case where the client engenders little sympathy.
Enter Harvard Law School dean Ronald Sullivan, who several months ago undertook the defense of the unpopular Harvey Weinstein. To say Weinstein has become a pariah in this country is an understatement. Weinstein has the wrong charges (sexual assault) the wrong accusations (using a position of power over women to sexually assault them) at the wrong time (#metoo).
It's a case that cries out for Rumpole.
But Weinstein did not hire your favourite blogger. Instead Weinstein settled for Harvard Law School Dean Ronald Sullivan, who we grudingly admit, was not a bad second choice.
Except the students at Harvard erupted. "How could defend such a person?" was the question repeatedly asked among the spoiled denizens of Harvard Square. Protests ensued. Students didn't want a Law School dean who would stoop to represent such a despicable character as Harvey Weinstein.
Yesterday Harvard caved, removing Ronald Sullivan as a dean of the law school in response to the criticism of his defense of Weinstein.
Let us repeat that slowly- Ronald Sullivan was removed as a dean of the law school because the people at Harvard did not approve of his client.
The spoiled Harvard brats, who know nothing, live in an Ivory Tower, and pay lip service to a constitutional system of justice where everyone is entitled to a defense and they are presumed innocent until proven guilty...unless they are charged with using a position of power to assault and abuse women. Then the students cup their hands over their open mouths in horror: "How could you defend such a person?"
So here is the system of justice according to Harvard- everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence and counsel of their choice so long as the students of Har vahard, using their Brahmin sense of right and wrong, agree.
Put another way, the people at Harvard make us sick. They have no idea about the real world and their sense of outrage has no place at a law school. If they find Harvey Weinstein and allegations against him repulsive, then they need to find another area of study. Go to med school. Engineering school. Architeture- go design battered women shelters and provide beds for abused children and their mothers. It's the lord's work and a very worthy cause. But when it comes to criminal defense, stay out of our work. Leave it to the professionals. You don't want people who are accused of crimes you find offensive to be presumed innocent and have the right to the counsel of their choice.
So be it.
Go jump in the Charles River and clean it and make yourself feel good about being a doo-gooder.
Idiots. (Sorry DOM, no offense intended).
20 comments:
Shame on Harvard.
He was actually the dean of Winthrop House, an undergraduate residential house, not the Dean of the Law School. Irrespective, not a good showing for Harvard.
Wrong- he was a Dean (not THE dean of the law school, but A dean. Unlike many, I am careful with what I write) at the Law School AND a dean at Wintrop House. A double-dean as it were.
What source do you have that says he was also a "dean" at Harvard Law School and that he also lost that position in addition to the undergraduate dean position? Most sources just say he was the undergraduate faculty "dean" at Winthrop house, but claim he and his wife still retain their Harvard Law positions.
"Though their decade-long term at Winthrop will end this summer, Sullivan and Robinson will keep their appointments at Harvard Law School, where they both teach. They are the first African Americans to serve as faculty deans of an undergraduate house."
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/5/11/winthrop-faculty-deans-to-leave/
You also said "Put another way, the people at Harvard make us sick. They have no idea about the real world and their sense of outrage has no place at a law school."
Not all the people agitating for Sullivan's removal were at the law school. Looks like a good number of them are just undergraduates:
"Mudannayake, who concentrates in Visual and Environmental Studies, said her aspirations to work in the film industry made Sullivan’s decision to represent Weinstein personal."
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/2/12/students-protest-sullivan-weinstein/
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/2/22/ABHW-Sullivan-letter/
So it's not like the students denouncing Sullivan claim to have some special concern or devotion for "due process."
Anyway, Sullivan had already quit Weinstein's defense team before he lost his undergraduate dean position. So looks like it was already getting too hot for him.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/5/13/sullivan-leaves-weinstein-team/
Just curious, what do you think of Lisa Bloom, who withdrew from representing Weinstein after being criticized by her own mother, among others?
She tried to beg forgiveness for her sins and promised she would not represent clients of that category again.
"Bloom said she also learned some hard lessons and will no longer represent men accused of sexual misconduct, 'even those who convincingly tell me they are innocent.'"
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/claudiarosenbaum/lisa-bloom-knows-she-made-a-colossal-mistake-in-harvey
At least insofar as Winthrop House was concerned, he was not renewed rather than fired. And it came in the wake of several years of substantial complaints about his management style
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/05/11/harvey-weinstein-lawyer-loses-post-dean-harvard/sOdUgXc2YxRREahAZQG4yI/story.html
2 tidbits on cnn's coverage of scola's recusal order:
--"The judge is wrong. He does not know the facts, and he has fallen for some of the advertising," said Dr. Otis Brawley, a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University's School of Medicine and the former chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society.
--His next major hurdle may be finding a judge who will preside over the case. Two other judges have also recused themselves due to their friendships with the well-known attorney.
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/05/16/health/judge-proton-beam-therapy-recusal-unitedhealthcare/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F
I love that judges are recusing be because they are friends with scola. Maybe give the case to altman because he can say he knows scola, but their friendship currently is only a 1 out of 10?
From the Op Ed piece in the NY Times by another Harvard professor:
Mr. Sullivan is my friend and colleague. He is the director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School and the architect of a conviction-review program in Brooklyn that has freed a score of improperly convicted individuals.
As to Bloom- I have a bit of a different view. Apparently criminal defense isn't for her and I take her statement as an admission of that. She can't represent people charged with those crimes, although I cringe when I read her state that her new found belief applies even to those who are innocent.
But there is still a difference between a lawyer who decides that a case is not for them for the lawyer's own personal reasons, and a lawyer who is essentially forced off of the case because of his/her firm (or university) doesn't like the publicity. And of course when it is a law school doing it, it becomes outrageous. Harvard should just drop criminal law from their curriculum and state that from this point forward they are a civil law school only.
"Mr. Sullivan is my friend and colleague. He is the director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School and the architect of a conviction-review program in Brooklyn that has freed a score of improperly convicted individuals."
The op-ed piece from Randall Kennedy does not identify Sullivan as having a "dean" position at Harvard Law School.
Sullivan's Harvard profile page says he is "Jesse Climenko Clinical Professor of Law" and "Director, Criminal Justice Institute" and takes care to distinguish between those positions and his undergraduate dean position at Winthrop House which he will soon lose:
"Professor Sullivan is a leading theorist in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, trial practice and techniques, legal ethics, and race theory. He is the faculty director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute and the Harvard Trial Advocacy Workshop. Professor Sullivan also serves as Faculty Dean (formerly, “Master”) of Winthrop House at Harvard College. In 2009, he became the first African American ever appointed Master in Harvard's history."
https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10870/Sullivan/
Even if you think his positions at the Law School constitute a de facto "deanship," there is no mention of him losing his Law School professorship or his position as Director of the Criminal Justice Institute, as the previous Crimson article said both Sullivan and his wife "will keep their appointments at Harvard Law School."
Also, you keep saying "it is a law school doing it," when there is no indication that the Harvard Law School administration is involved in Sullivan's removal from a Harvard College undergraduate dean position. The person who decided not to renew Sullivan's contract was Rakesh Khurana, who is a dean of Harvard College, not a dean of Harvard Law School. Indeed, all the administrators who took credit for not renewing Sullivan's position are administrators for the undergraduate college or the graduate school, not the Law School:
"Dozens of students met with Khurana, Dean of Students Katherine G. O’Dair, and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Claudine Gay in Winthrop dining hall Saturday afternoon. Many hugged and thanked the administrators for their decision to not renew Sullivan and Robinson."
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/5/11/winthrop-faculty-deans-to-leave/
And it looks like most of the students agitating against Sullivan were undergraduates, not law students.
"But there is still a difference between a lawyer who decides that a case is not for them for the lawyer's own personal reasons, and a lawyer who is essentially forced off of the case because of his/her firm (or university) doesn't like the publicity."
Yeah, but it seems Lisa Bloom only realized the case was "not for her" after she received the public blowback.
For the record, Sullivan is trying to claim he's only withdrawing from Weinstein's defense because the trial date would conflict with his teaching obligations at Harvard Law School:
"Sullivan asked a New York judge for permission to withdraw from the Weinstein case last week, saying in a letter that because the trial's start had recently been moved from June to September, he would be unavailable.
Sullivan is scheduled to teach a daily course on September afternoons and evenings. That, coupled with preparation in the morning, would make his participation in the Weinstein case "unworkable," and it's too late to arrange a sabbatical or alternative teaching schedule, the letter reads."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/us/harvard-law-professor-ronald-sullivan-harvey-weinstein/index.html
Don't know if his excuse is genuine or just a cover for him shrinking away from the bad publicity.
Harvard, the school for folks who can't get into Vanderbilt or Rice.
People hate criminal defense attorneys until they get a dui, their kid steals something, they beat their wife, caught selling coke etc. then they hire you, stiff you of some money, complain about you 6 months later after getting a charge reduced or dropped, and then never want to see you again because you remind them of being arrested for bribing someone to admit your spoiled stupid kid to get into one of 2000 colleges, or the sexting your kid did at school, or the escort service you ran in law school etc. I know of one fla. bar attorney who did an armed robbery in high school, daddy got him out of that one.
I am an out of town attorney. Can anyone tell me which judges are holding Arthur Hearings so I can set down a hearing for a client of mine? Thanks
"Let us repeat that slowly- Ronald Sullivan was removed as a dean of the law school because the people at Harvard did not approve of his client."
Where does it say that he lost or was removed from any position with the law school? Their removal was "from their roles as faculty deans for undergraduate student housing, a position that oversees students’ academic progress and overall well-being." Sullivan's wife said their law school positions were not related to their Winthrop House faculty dean positions.
"University Dean Rakesh Khurana announced in an email Saturday that Sullivan and Robinson would not continue on as faculty deans at Harvard’s Winthrop House after June 30. The faculty dean positions are unrelated to their law school appointments, Robinson told the ABA Journal in an email."
http://www.abajournal.com/web/article/harvard-law-professor-leaves-harvey-weinstein-defense-team-and-residence-leadership-spot
And the Crimson said "Sullivan and Robinson will keep their appointments at Harvard Law School, where they both teach."
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/5/11/winthrop-faculty-deans-to-leave/
BREAKING
The local legal and gastronomical phenom who is also a purveyor of fine cigars and tobacco products, has teamed up with the equally famous retired judge and they will be opening in Santa Clara California this spring the new hit eatery: THE CALIPHATE!
Yes from the owners of that hit local gastropub that was also a venue (hint hint) and People Magazine's fav retired judge comes THE CALIPHATE a strictly California eatery. The Caliphate - it's not just in Iraq, will serve international and locally sourced seafood, as well as in house made pastas and fresh gelatos. Yummy....
THE CALIPAHATE (an eatery) coming soon to Santa Clara Calif spring 2019.
What? Are you kidding me?
The Caliphate?
Why Santa Clara? Why not in Beverly Hills or San Francisco? Will it be Prix Fixe or a la carte? Is it competitive with Saison or Coi or Quince? I’m still a Gary Danko fan.
Maybe this new Caliphate is trying to cater to the Cupertino youngsters at Apple, but I don’t see them eating a 12 course wine pairing meal for $495 per person.
Overpriced and fancy pork belly is so last decade. Good luck anyway - but not a clever location.
7:23, Reading Comprehension is important. The Judges are recusing themselves because they are friend with Richard Cole, not because they're friends with Scola.
4:27
Kind of beat the horse to death already.
All law students who protested against Sullivan should be expelled because they do not know, or care to know and understand, what the role of attorneys is in our system of justice.
"Kind of beat the horse to death already."
Rumpole posted that "Ronald Sullivan was removed as a dean of the law school." When somebody pointed out that Sullivan was removed as an undergraduate dean, Rumpole responded "Wrong- he was a Dean (not THE dean of the law school, but A dean. Unlike many, I am careful with what I write) at the Law School AND a dean at Wintrop House. A double-dean as it were."
When asked what source said that Sullivan was a law school dean, Rumpole cited to a NY Times op-ed which said Sullivan was "director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School and the architect of a conviction-review program in Brooklyn that has freed a score of improperly convicted individuals." That's not a dean position, and it doesn't say anything about Sullivan being removed from it. Indeed, all sources are claiming that Sullivan has kept his law school positions. So does Rumpole have a source that says Sullivan was removed as a "dean of the law school," or was the original post in error?
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