Lawyers betray .

the law

kdouis Claiborne ru, Yers, lawyers everywhere, and not a lawniTan in sight. To a member of the Bar, one "le most awful by-products of Watergate is e revelation of how many — and how far — 11wYers, sworn to uphold and defend the law, ”ave betrayed their calling. Or is it only a byPcduct? The recent record may well suggest i,° more cynical non-lawyers that the prevaenee of lawyers at the top of the American b\'erliment was a cause of Watergate. e,„A; dinittedly, American lawyers have never ClOYed an unblemished reputation. At the .°,1,vest level, we have always had unethical es,.neist.6rs,' criminal mouthpieces' and

fix

1'yrther up the scale, lawyers have long s;,11,.t,thernselves to doubtful practices in the 'vIce of lobbying legislators for their And we are all too familiar with the 'hrultiouslocal District Attorney who abuses 1.4 c'ffice for personal political advancement. alas, is it novel in the United States to a4 corruptible lawyers in the highest places, Grn„„"g legislators, in the judiciary, in the -"ernor's office, in the federal executive stablishment. BYerY unlike the standards of the English 1E:sr', to be sure. Yet, the American legal pro pbssht°2 had a just claim to special accom "lents. For all its history, the United deTes has had lawyers ready, often eager, to sec,,end the unpopular, the poor, the perag:ited, thoSe most in need of a champion A'ilst Prevailing intolerance or oppression. fo,. ; increasingly, lawyers have been in the wh'e'ront of the battle for social justice — eiarher the cause was for civil liberties, ra ecluality, penal reform, environmental rea;i,Y.. or against governmental overpe'rig. corporate abuse, undue censorship,

,lee brutality, economic inequities.

's it still so? One may dciubt whether the Public

rernain reputation of the legal profession

c law,„ -s favourably balanced. Who trusts a sol„,''r after Watergate? All America has seen of its most prominent lawyers lying, sw-A,'"ng. refusing questions, retracting an% te" s;irs. seeking immunity, bargaining their Qri,„111: cioY, disclaiming responsibility, innating their brethren. \v,!3°th the-Ellsberg and Watergate break-ins (wle"0 organised by a lawyer, Gordon Liddy , durin • most of the election campaign, e was th g mo , official "legal adviser" to the Presi-` s Re-election Committee); it was a law iii Baldwin, who monitored the NI:gal telephone tap installed at Watergate in aci":Y and acted as look-out for the interrupted lio'enture in June; another lawyer, White h4„use Counsel Charles Colson, is said to

advocated burgling the Brookings In

Eon in Washington; other dirty tricks dedeed to undermine the Democratic presienntial candidates were the charge of a differtifitikaWYer, Donald Segretti; the illegal doings N,,'"e, White House 'plumbers' were super._kro'hov tw,o lawyers, Presidential aides Egil r4",, and David Young; it mias a lawyer, rtuston, who concocted the now famous Plan of break-ins; and other lawyers `,filvolved in the illegal Watergate coverIncluding Frederick LaRue, a former 1.;site „ liouse Counsel, Gordon Strachan, the s',° Man between the White House Chief was'aff artd the Re-election Committee (who ,the ,,Iater appointed General Counsel of thi,IpQnited States Information Agency, of all ,s‘ Q11,1t,„' 1, and Robert Mardian, formerly in thet,e of the Internal Security Division of The. l?artment

of Justice.

Is is not, alas, an exhaustive list. The roll

of illegal lawyers is longer and more prominent still: the President's personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, disbursed funds to the Watergate burglars after the event; the principal Legal Counsel to the President, John Dean, was privy to the break-in and very ac tive in the attempt to suppress the truth by illegal means; John Ehrlichman, No. 2 man in the White House and a lawyer, participated, at the least, in efforts to pervert the CIA and the FBI; the Attorney General of the United States, John Mitchell, is heavily implicated in illegal conduct both before and after Watergate and has been indicted for attempting to obstruct the course of justice in connection with an earlier transaction; and, to top it all, the lawyer-President, Watergate aside, has confessed to directing flagrantly illegal acts.

What is now clearly revealed is that the lawyers in and around the White House, led by the lawyer-President, deliberately overstepped those legal boundaries which were erected specifically to control them as agents of government. They made a mockery of the Constitution and the laws of the United States circumscribing the exercise of official power. And it was done without qualm: simply a cool-headed choice of illegal 'options.' While inconsistently denying complicity in Watergate, the President himself admittedly directed flagrant violations of law. And his legal assistants, encouraged by what Senator Ervin calls the "Gestapo mentality" pre, vailing in the Oval Office, went to the length of attempting to steal psychiatric records.

The offence is fundamental. The issue is not whether government must have the right to invade the privacy of individuals, by searches and eavesdropping, to protect the people at large from serious crime — including revo lutionary violence. Am_erican law doesnot forbid such intrusions; on the contrary, they

are expressly authorised. But the law restricts the occasions, defines the allowable limits, prescribes the proper agencies, and, most im portant, conditions wiretapping, electronic eavesdropping, and most searches on the ap,proval of an independent magistrate. There's the rub. The President and his lawyers were wholly unwilling to submit their schemes to the scrutiny of a mere judge.

Some laymen may shrug at the suggested distinction between a 'burglary' authorised by the President alone and a' search and seizure' conducted pursuant to a warrant issued by a judge. In some countries, no doubt, the difference would be purely formal. But, as Judge Byrne and Judge Sirica and the Supreme Court itself have sufficiently shown, the United States still has a very independent judiciary. And lawyers — not least a lawyerPresident and an Attorney General — ought to appreciate the point.

Circumventing the legal requirements of judicial approval amounts to lawlessness which breeds lawlessness, especially when the example is given by the Chief Executive and the Chief Law Officer of the nation. It is the most dangerous illegality: arrogant power unchecked by the restraints which legal rules supply. Mr Nixon, Mr Mitchell, and their seconas, conceived the law only as a weapon against anarchy and revolution. But, in the English-speaking world, we have long since learned that law controlling the rulers is what distinguishes democracy from tyranny. By so blatantly ignoring that principle, the President and the Attorney General have made all lawyers, at least all lawyers in government, suspect. We may take comfort in a few apparent exceptions: Erwin Griswold, the Solicitor General who refused to defend his President's claim for illegal powers; Whitney North Seymour, the United States Attorney in New York who procured an indictment against his Attorney General; Elliot Richardson, the new Attorney General who declines to represent the President in any clash with the prosecutors; Archibald Cox, the former Solicitor General, now the imperious and rigorous Special, Prosecutor. We know there are thousands more lawyers in 107 side and outside government who remain faithful to the law. But the larger public may be in doubt. After Watergate, who knows what evil lurks in the mind of a lawyer. (Legal ' hearts' are out of vogue.) There is no certain cure. A symbolic ges ture suggests itself, however: to challenge the fitness of the most prominent among the compromised lawyers before the Courts, which in America have power to discipline the Bar, If the name of lawyer is to regain its meaning, those in gross default must be struck from the rolls. Gordon Liddy, it is true, has already been disbarred. But, here, we need not inch our way up from the bottom; nor is it necessary to await the outcome of a criminal trial. For this purpose, the Bench and Bar constitute an autonomous democracy, from whose processes even the President of the United States enjoys no immunity. On with it, then. Let the CaliforniaSupreme Court or the New York Court of Appeals, or, for that matter, the Supreme Court of the United States, summon Richard Nixon, " not as President of the United States but as a Member of the Bar admitted to practice before the Court," and call upon him to make .answer, if any he have, why he should not be disbarred. If we cannot cleanse the White House, we can at least purge the Bar.

Louis Claiborne is a former deputy Solicitor General of the United States.