The Doctors’ Plot and “Kill all the lawyers!”

Being a professional in America used to be a very cool thing. It was never that way in the Olde Countrie: doctors were just tradesmen who had to enter the great houses through the servants’ entrance, and lawyers, divided into barristers and solicitors, didn’t enjoy high status either. Look at Sydney Carton in the first chapters of A Tale of Two Cities. But in America, where as they say, aristocracy never got off the boat, professionals were the ruling class. Doctors “walked on water”, as my BMD likes to fondly recall. And lawyers—well, you hd the jokes which have been around since Shakespeare’s time s my title references, but we were feared and respected, in the sense that people recognized our achievement and the power that it conferred, even if they hated us for it.

But see, that’s the thing: the professions were a fraternity ( and I use that term inclusively, in the sense that all humans can be called “man”) and we had our own governance,,our own code of ethics, our our particular loyalties— and lack thereof. We considered it a sacred trust to apply our unique knowledge, our independent professional judgment and skills for the good of the patient in front of us, for even the patently guilty client.

Everybody knows what happened to independent medical judgment during the pandemic. In a word, it was criminalized. Proscribed.

When B.Hussein Omega got elected, I remember there was talk of prosecuting some of the White House attorneys who had written memos concluding that techniques like waterboarding might under certain circumstances be legal. I could not believe that. “Charge them with a crime—FOR DOING LEGAL RESEARCH!?!?!”” Well, that was 2009, we did things differently then; nothing came of that proposal, BUT it dropped its deadly and fecund seeds in our soil.

And now, we have the affair of John Eastman, Esq., threatened with disbarment in California for the crime of researching and writing about election law on behalf of President Trump.

Let’s review:

see, what you DO as a lawyer is try to find support in precedent or statutory language for your client’s position. TRY. YOUR. DAMNEDEST!
And there will, you can bet, be a colleague on the other side trying equally hard to refute it. But, as long as your client’s position is “colorable” ( love that term, it makes me thing of slapping the face of some legal theory to bring it to roseate life) OR you are in good faith arguing for a change in the law. ( yes you can DO that: contrary to what we’ve heard in the last few years , there is no such thing as “super-precedent”) you are within your approved rôle as advocate in our adversary system.

What did Eastman do? He read and researched the US Constitution, Article II, which provides in pertinent part:

“The President of the Senate [i.e, the VP] shall, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, open all the Certificates and the Votes shall then be counted.” , and concluded that it could mean the VP had authority to ensure that the electoral votes he was counting were legitimate: that is, Pence could have paused the vote counting in light of the various legal challenges pending in several states.
Pusillanimous Pence didn’t do so, of course, and is now putting it about, erroneously, that Eastman’s advice was to just throw out a buncha electoral votes and declare Trump and himself the winners.
Okay, so he declined to follow advice of counsel. That’s okay too, but it doesn’t justify persecuting Eastman for researching legal authority for the position advantageous to his client. IS the VP’s rôle purely ceremonial? Or, as the second highest office holder in our country, CAN, nay, SHOULD he inquire into the legitimacy of the electoral votes?

My point is that, just like doctors, attorneys are now going to be punished and deprived of their most valuable “property” —our law licenses—for the “crime” of expressing a professional opinion, if that opinion turns out to be incorrect or even just unpopular.

And that, ladies and gents, is the “Off with their heads!”moment.