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April 13, 2004
About Damn Time
I was beginning to think the Dems' efforts to sweep this under a rug would be successful and that this would never happen.
A conservative watchdog group plans to file a formal ethics complaint today against a former Judiciary Committee staffer to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, arguing that the lawyer tried to influence a landmark affirmative action case in which she had participated.
The staffer, Olati Johnson, previously worked as an attorney for the NAACP....the group that represented Michigan students in the race-based admissions case. Ms. Johnson is the author of the infamous 'leaked' memo in which she asked Sen. Kennedy to stall the nomination of a judge to the appeals court which would be hearing the case.
"The thinking is that the current 6th Circuit will sustain the affirmative-action program, but if a new judge with conservative views is confirmed before the case is decided, that new judge will be able, under 6th Circuit rules, to review the case and vote on it," Ms. Johnson wrote to Mr. Kennedy...."Melody and I are a little concerned about the propriety of scheduling hearings based on the resolution of a particular case," she wrote, referring to Melody Barnes, Mr. Kennedy's chief counsel at the time. "Nevertheless, we recommend that Gibbons be scheduled for a later hearing: the Michigan case is important."
Important enough, apparently, to ignore an inconvenient ethics rule.
The cornerstone of Mr. Mazzella's complaint against Ms. Johnson is a section of the New York court's rules of professional conduct stating that a "lawyer serving as a public officer or employee shall not ... [p]articipate in a matter in which the lawyer participated personally and substantially while in private practice or non-governmental employment."
That's what all the uproar about how the memo was leaked (accessed by a Republican staffer from a wide-open shared server) was all about. Deflecting attention away from what the memo really represented:
A blatant ethics violation by the Dems, in an attempt to manipulate the composition of the appeals court in order to win a pending affirmative action case.
And it's about damn time someone called them on it.
Posted by Rita at April 13, 2004 06:40 AM
Comments
Does "matter" include discussion of political appointments? I mean, technically, that would prohibit lawyers from being involved in politics while they're lawyers, wouldn't it? I thought "matter" refered to representational matters, not politics.
Heck, you could argue that VOTING for Kennedy was an ethical violation if you took the reasoning in this case to the extreme.
Especially when you look at some of the stuff that went on during the Clinton impeachment, you had HUGE political conflicts of interest, but there was no ethical violations alleged (aside from confidentiality).
Maybe there's a violation I'm not seeing, though.
Posted by: Aaron at April 13, 2004 05:26 PM
You're joking, right?
Posted by: Rita at April 14, 2004 03:52 PM
No, I'm serious; we'll just have to see how the case plays out, and what the defenses are. I'm kinda curious if ethical conflict rules stretch into political activity myself.
Say you represent a an organization that's suing various abortion doctors. Is it an ethical violation to work your connections in the party to encourage the appointment of more anti-abortion judges?
It seems like a major part of politics these days is trying to get judges who agree with you appointed. Affirmative action, immigration, drug laws, privacy, manditory sentences; appointing judges who agree with you on these issues is in everyone's political interest. Are lawyers who get in on the action when they have cases pending in the courts where the judges will serve violating ethics rules?
Posted by: Aaron at April 14, 2004 05:05 PM