This week, I have received emails from Connecticut bar members over a message posted by President Maggie Castinado, President-Elect James T. (Tim) Shearin, and Vice President Emily A. Gianquinto warning them about criticizing the prosecutions of former President Donald Trump. The message from the bar leadership is chilling for those lawyers who view cases like the one in Manhattan as a raw political prosecution. While the letter does not outright state that such criticism will be considered unethical conduct, it states that the criticism has “no place in the public discourse” and calls on members to speak publicly in support of the integrity of these legal proceedings.
The statement begins by warning members that “words matter” but then leaves the ramifications for bar members dangling on how it might matter to them. They simply note that some comments will be viewed as “cross[ing] the line from criticism to dangerous rhetoric.”
According to the Connecticut Bar, it is now considered reckless and unprofessional to make analogies to show trials or to question the integrity of the legal system or the judges in such cases.
For example, criticizing Judge Juan Merchan for refusing to recuse from the case is considered beyond the pale. Many lawyers believe that his political contributions to Biden and his daughter’s major role as a Democratic fundraiser and activist should have prompted Merchan to remove himself (and any appearance of a conflict). I have been more critical of his rulings, which I believe were both biased and wrong.
Yet, the Bar is warning lawyers that such comments can cross the line. The letter assures members that they are free to criticize but warn that attacking the ethics of a judge or the motivations behind these cases is dangerous and could spark violence.
I have previously denounced overheated rhetoric and share the concern over how such rage rhetoric can encourage violence. After the verdict, I immediately encouraged people not to yield to their anger, but to trust our legal system. I believe that the verdict in New York may ultimately be overturned. I also noted that I do not blame the jury but rather the judge and the prosecutors for an unfounded and unfair trial.
Of course, the concern over rage rhetoric runs across our political spectrum. While rarely criticized in the media, we have seen an escalation of reckless rhetoric from the left. For example, Georgetown Law Professor Josh Chafetz declared that “when the mob is right, some (but not all!) more aggressive tactics are justified.”
My concern is not with the plea for lawyers to take care that their comments do not encourage such “aggressive tactics.” The problem is the suggestion that lawyers are acting somehow unprofessionally in denouncing what many view as a two-tier system of justice and the politicalization of our legal system.
Like many, I believe that the Manhattan case was a flagrant example of such weaponization of the legal system and should be denounced by all lawyers. It is a return, in my view, to the type of political prosecution once common in this country.
For those lawyers who view such prosecutions as political, they are speaking out in defense of what they believe is the essence of blind justice in America. What is “reckless” to the Connecticut Bar is righteous to others. Notably, the Bar officials did not write to denounce attacks on figures like Bill Barr or claims that the Justice Department was rigging justice during the Trump years.
Likewise, the letter focuses on critics of the Trump prosecutions and not the continued attacks on conservative jurists like Justice Samuel Alito. It has never published warnings about those calling conservative justices profanities, attacking their religion, or labeling them “partisan hacks” or other even “insurrectionist sympathizers.” Liberal activists have been calling for stopping conservative jurists “by any means necessary.”
In Connecticut, Sen. Richard Blumenthal has warned conservative justices to rule correctly or face “seismic changes.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Sunday that the Supreme Court was “becoming brazenly corrupt and brazenly political.” That did not appear to worry the bar. Likewise, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also declared in front of the Supreme Court “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.”
The letter goes further and suggests that lawyers should speak publicly in support of trials like the one in Manhattan, a view that ignores the deep misgivings over the motivations and means used in New York to target an unpopular figure in this city. You have the top Bar officials calling on lawyers to take a public position that is opposed by many lawyers and citizens in defending the integrity of these prosecutions. Imagine the response if the Idaho Bar called on its lawyers to speak out against these cases and declared that it is reckless or unprofessional to defend them.
I expect that, in the very liberal Bar of Connecticut, the letter is hardly needed. Indeed, this letter is likely to be quite popular. Yet, I would have thought that Bar officials would have taken greater care to respect the divergent opinions on these trials and the need to avoid any statements that might chill the exercise of free speech.
Ironically, the letter only reinforced the view of a legal system that is maintaining a political orthodoxy and agenda. These officials declare that it is now unprofessional or reckless for lawyers to draw historical comparisons to show trials or to question the motives or ethics underlying these cases. They warn lawyers not to “sow distrust in the public for the courts where it does not belong.” Yet, many believe that there is an alarming threat to our legal system and that distrust is warranted in light of prosecution like the one in Manhattan.
As discussed in my new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, critics of political prosecutions under the Crown and during the Adams Administrations were often threatened with disbarment or other legal actions for questioning the integrity or motives of judges or prosecutors. It is not enough to say “well that was then and this is now.” The point is that the Bar Association also has a duty to protect the core rights that define our legal system, particularly the right of free speech.
Again, these officials are not threatening Bar action against critics of these cases. However, as evidenced by the emails in my inbox, it is being taken as a warning by many who hold misgivings over these prosecutions.
Our legal system has nothing to fear from criticism. Indeed, free speech strengthens our system by exposing divisions and encouraging dialogue. It is orthodoxy and speech intolerance that represent the most serious threats to that system.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon and Schuster, 2024).
Here is the message in its entirety:
Dear Members,
Words matter. Reckless words attacking the integrity of our judicial system matter even more.
In the wake of the recent trial and conviction of former President Donald Trump, public officials have issued statements claiming that the trial was a “sham,” a “hoax,” and “rigged”; our justice system is “corrupt and rigged”; the judge was “corrupt” and “highly unethical”; and, that the jury was “partisan” and “precooked.” Others claimed the trial was “America’s first communist show trial”—a reference to historic purges of high-ranking communist officials that were used to eliminate political threats.
These claims are unsubstantiated and reckless. Such statements can provoke acts of violence against those serving the public as employees of the judicial branch. Indeed, such statements have resulted in threats to those fulfilling their civic obligations by sitting on the jury, as evidenced by social media postings seeking to identify the names and addresses of the anonymous jurors and worse, in several cases urging that the jurors be shot or hanged. As importantly, such statements strike at the very integrity of the third branch of government and sow distrust in the public for the courts where it does not belong.
To be clear, free speech includes criticism. There is and should be no prohibition on commenting on the decision to bring the prosecution, the prosecution’s legal theory, the judge’s rulings, or the verdict itself. But headlines’ grabbing, baseless allegations made by public officials cross the line from criticism to dangerous rhetoric. They have no place in the public discourse.
It is up to us, as lawyers, to defend the courts and our judges. As individuals, and as an Association, we cannot let the charged political climate in which we live dismantle the third branch of government. To remain silent renders us complicit in that effort.
Respect for the judicial system is essential to our democracy. The CBA condemns unsupported attacks on the integrity of that system.
Sincerely,
Maggie Castinado
President,
Connecticut Bar Association
James T. (Tim) Shearin
President-Elect,
Connecticut Bar Association
Emily A. Gianquinto
Vice President,
Connecticut Bar Association
This column also ran on Fox.com
So pointing out the obvious is now reckless?
If anything this threat by the bar is an example of how reckless they are. They show they are the ones who would use their power to silence others. They are the ones who coming closer and closer to violence. They are the ones who would do anything to “get Trump!”
Thankfully, they have put their totalitarian views on full display for us all to see.
Exactly. They always project.
We never really evolved much beyond our primitive ancestors, for whom power determined everything. When all the trappings of reason, diplomacy, negotiation and discourse go by the wasteside, what’s left is brute force — and that’s what we’re seeing demonstrated everyday in this dying hegemon.
“In the end, it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.”
– Justice Learned Hand
Would the bar not want you to criticize judges that allowed KKK members to get off?
Liberals have been taking over the law schools for years and this is the result. These small minded, illiberal, biased and partisan people are really just activists and party hacks.
Remember the kids in high school that thought they knew it all, put down others that dared to play sports or heaven forbid be popular? This is the same little idiots all grown up.
It is amazing how the weakest among us have some need to decide what they deem as being right, organize others to take over institutions and then force feed their ideas on great masses of people. Think of the little people that populate the teacher’s unions, the little people that populate the bar associations, the little people that populate med schools, journalism schools and law schools. All little people that would rather organize than actually do a good job.
Does anyone think that any of these “bar leaders” is actually a great lawyer? Does anyone think that any teacher’s union heads are really great teachers? Does anyone think that any activist journalism professors are great reporters? No, these are small people with only an innate ability to organize due to an lack of ability to go it alone.
@hullbobby
I don’t know what you think of my comments or the mentality they convey, but I am one of ‘those kids all grown up’. 😉 This madness really is largely generational, and though certainly there are other ingredients in the stew, it has a lot more to do with yes – parenting – and ignorance fueled social and cultural decay, than it does the mentality of high schoolers. 🙄
Sane people tend to integrate their experiences and actually *grow* in addition to the growing up.
Nevertheless, I didn’t go to prom (but it wasn’t because I didn’t have a girlfriend), I’m a ‘cat’ person, and am still, as a mature adult, not much of a football fan. 😂 I also know how to load and fire every type of legal firearm, so 🤷🏽♂️
The Bar inadvertently summed the trial up quite succinctly!
They left little out. I think that is one Bar Ass. that has outlived its usefulness.
Dictators discourage you from expressing your views and ideas. Some people here do the the same thing.
Thank God, I am not admitted in Conn.! Shakespeare suggested “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” It would seem that the Conn. bar believes a muzzle is sufficient for the task!
Actually… read Shakespeare’s whole passage.
😉
The Bar is a medieval guild. It does not fit in the modern world. Although intended to warrant quality and ethical behavior of lawyers (which can be realized through alternative means as well), in fact in operates like a cartel, controlling who can access the profession and who cannot, violating the very principle of freedom to make a living in one’s chosen profession. Being a lawyer should not be privilege. The bar is an illiberal organization. As the Bar can control the number of attorneys (by making the bar exam more difficult), it also exercises price control in the sense that it controls the supply of lawyers relative to demand, to ensure artificially high fees for attorneys. Get rid of the Bar.
They officers of the Connecticut Bar Association seemed to have forgotten that in the preface of the letter they should have said “In our view”. Bar association or not that is an extremely chilling letter and I also note that nothing was said in any letter from this group when Supreme Court Justices were being pilloried and threatened.
There is a real condition in medicine where the optic nerve or the occipital area of the brain (where visual images are actually “seen and interpreted by your brain”) are injured. This results in an almost total lack of the ability to see anything right of center or left of center (depending on the specific injury site). It is an amazing exam to perform when you see someone and first diagnose the deficit (often after a stroke).
It’s an incredibly unusual condition and to see it occurring in 3 people in the same room, all with a right side deficit. IT is a true signal case in medicine, almost without precedent.
Of course it may be a more simple diagnosis and they are just blind as bats in this area. I favor this diagnosis rather than the more esoteric diagnosis .
“In My View” of course.
Physicians and Attorneys are alike in many ways especially in temperament, and over all personality. Physicians hate talking to attorneys and I have seen attorneys often really don’t like getting up in front of physicians and speaking. It’s like shark on shark.
I don’t like bar associations and I particularly don’t like their abilities as a private organization to rule the profession in their states and locales. Far too political for my taste.
I have dealt with the Medical Licensing Board in states like Illinois, Indiana, Texas and Georgia. I much prefer a state run medical board that is established by law and has it’s powers stipulated in a way to keep things generally unbiased but effective. They have official investigative power and can suspend a physician quickly if needed but they also have a clearcut path of investigation, finding error and dealing with it. And especially giving unbiased due process.
I feel that attorneys should have that same structure for their own protection. Of late Bar associations have seemed to run amuck in many liberal states. And conservative lawyers in those states seem to be in a the position of prey in a hunt.
I certainly disagree with this bar association. I don’t think any attorney should blindly swear support of obvious bias in judges, or courts. If anything attorneys should feel professionally and honor bound to speak out when error is committed. This Bar association is sounding a lot like Antony “I am Science” Fauci. Or maybe they are just doing their interpretation of Judge Dredd. I think Sylvester Stallone and Karl Urban did it better.
It is chilling how some yahoos on this blog discourgage you from excercising your indispensable right to express your
ideas and views if you don’t meet their criteria.
Anonymous said: “It is chilling how some yahoos on this blog discourgage you from excercising your indispensable right to express yourideas and views if you don’t meet their criteria.”
Clueless BS. Discouraging what those so-called “yahoos” consider to be mendacious or clueless posts is an intrinsic exercise of their own free speech rights. You are free to ignore their comments, are you not?
The whining “Ralph de Minimus” (Svelaz, Wally, REGARDING ABOVE, Washington Post / NY Times sycophant) doesnt meet anyones minimal criteria for completing a paint by number paint set. Yet here we are having to scroll past his every Anonymous Rorschach ink blot test in the interest of keeping down methane + carbon dioxide emissions.
He likely failed from a school like NYU when striving for one of the following majors
Number 6,
Well said!
UpstatePartisan LOVES to ignore!
Look, we get it, you come here every single day, every single post to do what liberals always do, turn something nice into shit because they know nothing else and are jealous in what decent people have created – see detoit, philly, bmore, memphis, CA, etc.
You are discouraged because you do what you do, whcih is boring, repetitive, and distractive, However, know that we always know what the original thread is about – what idiots like you do to nice places like the ones we created. Now go run along and see if schiff will let you have him or whatever it is you do.
It is chilling how some yahoos on this blog discourgage you from excercising your indispensable right to express your
ideas and views if you don’t meet their criteria.
STFU
The Bible is clear that in the latter days, wrong will be called right and right will be called wrong. We are there. Jesus is coming soon!
After the nuclear cremation, everyone will be bones and ashes. Jesus will need a broom and a dust pan to save everyone.
Your feedback is right on the mark! Thank you!
If the practice of law requires the approval of any bar association, then there is a danger of bar associations becoming tyranical and excluding or segregating discriminating against lawyers with contrary political views and their clients. Look at the abusive lawfare that John Eastman is experiencing at the hands of the California Bar Association over representing President Trump in challenging the 2020 presidential election. Like everything else, bar associations are becoming political weapons. Sorry Professor Turley, it’s going to take more than a book to fix this problem. Maybe lawsuits against bar associations and specifically, officers of those bar associations, who target political opponents for attack using the bar association itself.
Lightspeed, you are right on the money! You can defend 9/11 attackers or plotters, pedophiles, rapists, domestic abusers and illegals charged with murder, but if you represent Trump you will be ostracized. They are fascists, plain and simple. Oh, and hypocrites.
The officers of teh Connecticut Bar Associaotin may wish to red this book: “Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich” by I Muller (Harvard University Press 1991)
It is recommended by the DOJ itself. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/hitlers-justice-courts-third-reich,
“This survey of the German legal system before, during, and after Hitler’s rule during the Third Reich reminds readers how fragile the safeguards of a civilized society can be when the legal system cannot, or does not, resist rampant misrule.
Abstract.
Beginning with an overview of the German judicial system during the Weimar Republic, this book’s main focus is on the country’s legal system from 1933 to 1945. Various difficult issues are addressed: how many German jurists and lawyers acquiesced in the Nazi seizure of power, collaborated with the regime and legitimated it, became involved in promoting the Aryan ideals of Nazism, meted out justice during the Nazi era, and, in short, violated their professional standards and basic morality.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Only the names are different.
I very much agree with Edwardmahl. “Judgement at Nuremberg “ also touched on this in a more dramatic fashion but drove the point home.
Surprise, surprise. The bar is trying to protect its own by telling them what to say and do. Who knew that there was gambling at Rick’s?
By “protect their own” do you mean decree what must be thought and said? I don’t think this is some benevolent act of protecting anyone other than DEMOCRATS.
The Connecticut letter is chilling in it’s presumptions and terrifying in it’s conclusions. How can they not see that they are all in for this Soviet-style political persecution show trial?? To not see the correlation means these lawyers are capable of anything. Scary!
The silence of most lawyers and their organizations is maddening. Yes, there are a few exemplary attorneys, such as Mr. Turley, but far and few in between. In fact several good attorneys have already been sued successfully for crossing the line as Mr. Turley noted above. Perhaps it is time for the citizens to demand that to be a judge or a lawyer one must simply pass the bar exam of the state. Time to widen the membership of the bar to include those who have remained outside of the DEI compost!
The Bar Association letter insists that “It is up to us, as lawyers, to defend the courts and our judges.”
Not true. If a lawyer feels courts and judges are misbehaving then that lawyer’s obligation is to try to correct it. I would never want a lawyer or his client to face such farcical treatment as Trump and his legal team had to endure.
New Mexico is miles ahead of Connecticut in punishing lawyers who report judicial misconduct. In 2023 the NM Supreme Court and the Bar authorities found an attorney guilty of defamation for filing a motion to disqualify a judge for conflicts of interest which the judge failed to disclose. Matter of Marshall, 2023-NMSC-006. The attorney lost his law license for pointing out judicial misconduct.
In essence, the ancient doctrine of seditious libel has been revived, whereby truth is no longer a defense. As the English courts decreed centuries ago, “The greater the truth, the greater the libel.”
Anonymous-Not a surprise from New Mexico. Pretty consistent Democratic state, but had trended Authoritarian Party most recently.
“My concern is not with the plea for lawyers to take care that their comments do not encourage such “aggressive tactics.” The problem is the suggestion that lawyers are acting somehow unprofessionally in denouncing what many view as a two-tier system of justice and the politicalization of our legal system.”
Well then what do we do with the likes of Micheal Cohen Esq. ?
[I’m just being a smart-ass- We know what the do with him]