Discussion for article #238430
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They should also be spanked.
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Then how does one petition the ABA, or another legal forum, to rescind their credentials as lawyers?
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The ABA doesnât license attorneys; one would have to complain to the Texas Bar. Realistically, they arenât going to do anything. Lawyers get disbarred for stealing client escrow funds and the like, not for stuff like this. Anyway, their fulminating has had no effect, and they both know it. Gay marriages are being performed all over Texas despite them, and I suspect a majority, even in Texas, approve or donât care. If these guys want to take a stand on a losing battle, why try to stop them?
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Public officials are entitled to express disagreement with Supreme Court decisions, but they are not free to disregard them, or encourage others to do so because they are legally and ethically bound to obey them. They are in a different position from ordinary citizens when it comes to civil disobedience and defying the Supreme Court. Individual citizens may ignore the Supreme Court on matters of conscience, but at their own legal peril. Public officials do not have this luxury. Almost all public officials, including elected, appointed, and civil service across the country take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Absolutely agree with this passage!
That is precisely why many officials in Washington DC, and many other places, should be removed from their positions and disbarred when appropriate for refusing to heed SCOTUS ruling on their district/State/City unconstitutional gun control laws.
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Such as ⌠?
(For the record, I agree. An attorney who is advocating others to enforce gun control of some sort which the SCOTUS has deemed unconstitutional should be disbarred. I just donât see any examples of that in recent memory.)
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Refusing to follow a Supreme Court ruling as a public official, especially when one takes an oath to obey itâand even more so when one is entrusted to enforce the law â is illegal.
What exactly would be the charge?
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How about you cite an actual example of willful non-compliance? Passing a law that the Supreme Court subsequently declares unconstitutional is not non-compliance and is, in fact, quite permissible, since no one can be sure a prior how the Court might rule.
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String ;em up! Hang 'em high, for treason.
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I do not wish to thread-jack and only wanted to express my agreement with that specific passage.
In other words, you got nuttinâ. No one has willfully ignored the ruling in DC vs Heller. The ruling said blanket prohibitions on all guns were unconstitutional, but allowed reasonable regulations. Itâs perfectly allowable to test those regulations. The same-sex marriage ruling had no such ambiguities. It said they must be treated equally with opposite-sex marriages. Period. End of story.
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By swearing to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, a lawmaker has an obligation to carefully consider each and every law constitutionality before voting for and enacting it. Crafting a law that blatantly goes against the Constitution is a violation of the supreme law of the land by itself and it should be made a crime. As a society we canât accept that a group of elected officials emanate laws mindlessly and in complete disregard of the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land and not a mere group of suggestions, then have to wait years and years for the challenge to those laws to make its way to Circuit Court of Appeal or even SCOTUS. Then have the same officials changing a few things in those laws, which really change nothing, and have the process restarted from the beginning. Litigation for civil rights and gay marriage comes to mind.
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Those who pass gun control laws and those who banned gay marriage believed they were acting constitutionally (and in the case of gun control, the verdict is still out). Unless you can prove otherwise, STFU. How many Supreme Court decisions have been surprises to the âexpertsâ? A great many, Of course, YOU are infallible, Iâm sure.
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I am not convinced by this article and think it is a stretch to believe Cruz should be disbarred or somehow punished by the Bar. I think it is highly questionable that a stateâs rules of professional conduct (the Model Rules are just that - models - and are not in fact binding on lawyers) would apply to Cruz while acting in his capacity as a politician rather than as a lawyer representing clients he is representing or advising. With all due respect to the author, his credentials do not appear to include any specialty in legal ethics nor is he noted as having even a law degree. I donât like Cruz, but this is a major stretch.
If this is the standard,
âdemonstrate respect for the legal system and for those who serve it, including judges.â
then Justice Scalia should be disbarred for his dissent in Overgefell.
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Huckabee believes that banning gay marriage is constitutional or should be made constitutional; 6 cops in Baltimore thought they were acting according to the laws; President Woodrow Wilson (D) believed Jim Crow laws were constitutionalâŚI can come up with dozen of examples like that and, according to your reasoning, they should all be excused because they believed they were/are right. Thatâs the point Iâm trying to make, we shouldnât wait for these false âbeliefsâ to be proved wrong by SCOTUS when they are so blatantly wrong at inception.
Then let us agree that, with the statements made by both Cruz and Huckabee that they would willingly disobey recent and not so recent SCOTUS rulings, they should be immediately disqualified as candidates for POTUS.
Unlike Roosevelt, who did some of his bending of the rules after he got into office (a switch in time saves nine), these guys have made it clear they will do whatever the h&ll they want, if elected. Heck, eliminate Jindal too because of his comment about disbanding the SCOTUS, which has its own article in the Constitution.
These moves would take us down from 15 to 12 GOP candidates, right off the bat.
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Are as absolute in your opinion about abortion rights as you are gun rights?
This article should include quotes from Ted Cruz which should supposedly cause him to be disbarred.
If you want a man punished for something he said, then give us his words.
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This actually comes up a lot with attorneys, and not just with those advising clients on prospective constitutional challenges.
Bar rules allow licensed attorneys to advise clients on the state - by which I mean âconditionâ, to avoid incurring the wrath of the Moops - of the law in relation to a set of circumstances and a prospective action being considered and the potential legal consequences of undertaking that action. Itâs often referred to as âproviding an opininoâ.
If it were otherwise, tax attorneys wouldnât be able to advise clients on estate and tax planning, or corporate finance options, among a myriad of things.
Outside of civil rights challenges, in the typically prosaic world of legal advice, the attorney who provides such an opinion is not just obliged to identify if, and in some cases where, the line is crossed between legal and illegal (whether it be federal or state law, laws or regulations, interpretations by judges in possibly analogous circumstances), but to urge the client take âthe safestâ or at least âa saferâ course of action, including to urge the client AGAINST those courses that constitute illegality or even just run the risk.
But none of thatâs closely analogous to what Professor Schultz is discussing here. These elected pols arenât engaged in advising clients; for the most part, theyâre urging civil disobedience. That holds itâs own challenges for attorneys specifically retained by clients to provide advise, and itâd take an awful lot more than the space appropriate to a reader comment on this website to cover, or even usefully summarize, those challenges.
The problem Professor Schultz raises in this post involves elected or appointed public officials urging civil disobedience on OTHER PUBLIC OFFICIALS. Theyâre in no way retained by clients as attorneys, theyâre not reviewing with and surveying for the clientsâ benefit the state (condition) of the law, theyâre not providing an opinion on proposed courses of conduct, and theyâre not ensuring any client of the potential consequences.
The remaining issue - one that Professor Schultz at best only touches on by implication - is the problem of the possible color of authority or right that an elected official has over an appointed public official or public service employee. Thatâs where the biggest risk arises with the kind of advocacy said to be advanced by Senator Cruz and Governor Abbott, among many many more available examples. THAT is precisely where their bar associations warning of or even entering into disbarment proceedings arise as not just appropriate but a necessity, or else the Rule of Law is suspended.
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