Pick a Side

Moral decisions, ethical blindness and lawyers

This weekend I read a guest essay in the New York Times by Keker, Van Nest and Peters, the senior partners at the law firm Keker, Van Nest and Peters. It was a bracing exhortation for lawyers to stand up to Trump’s attacks on law firms who Trump feels did him wrong. The authors call out the pusillanimous behavior of Paul, Weiss, a law firm who “capitulated, agreeing to direct $40 million worth of free legal work to causes Mr. Trump supports” to forestall an executive order that the authors assert “violates the First Amendment, contravenes fundamental due process rights and imperils the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.”

What interested me is that the authors used very direct language to call on their fellows in the legal field.

“You can support a lawyer’s right to represent unpopular clients and causes against powerful forces — essentially the oath we all took when becoming members of the bar. Or you can sit back, check your bank balance and watch your freedoms, along with the legal system and the tripartite system of government we should not take for granted, swirl down the drain.”

They are saying it’s time to make a choice. Do you want to uphold what you took an oath to protect? Or do you want to participate in the dismantling of our legal system? Those are the options. They write: “ A few brave judges will decide whether Mr. Trump is a president or a king.”

In my upcoming book, The Saint and the Drunk, I have a chapter called Pick a Side. It builds on the Ignatian exercise called The Two Standards, which says that sometimes we have to choose between good and evil. Ignatius, a former mercenary, uses the image of two armies, each with standards or flags. One is good, one is evil. Pick a side.

First, we have to see the sides. We have to understand where good and evil are. For most of us, and I include myself here, fear, pride, greed and envy can convince us that our personal benefit is paramount and that actual or anticipated discomfort, loss of status, money or power is to be avoided at all costs. We justify our choices to ride to the support of evil by saying it can’t be evil if it keeps us and our loved ones safe, comfortable, and provided for in the way we think we deserve.

Often, those of us who want to be intentional, ethical and moral are the most adept at self-serving justification. We deceive ourselves, so we can’t make accurate choices. The honest scoundrel who proudly flies the evil flag is at least not deluded. We who pretend to be upright and committed to justice while supporting leaders and policies who are working against those values are ethically blinded, and dangerous.

I put this in my book about making career decisions because we often don’t think of moral choices when we are deciding what kind of work we want to do. And often we can drift. I use the example of someone who went to law school to help people but ended up years later working to make sure the Sackler family of Purdue Pharma infamy avoids any consequences for unleashing OxyContin onto the world. One decision, then another, then another and you find yourself the standard bearer for the bad guys. We are often asked to pick a side, but sometimes we don’t know we were choosing until we’re in the thick of the battle and realizing we chose wrong. We make moral choices all the time, and if they are not congruent with our values, it’s going to damage us in the long run.

I believe that there are people who really think that Trump is the good guy. They have made a moral choice that is congruent with their beliefs. I don’t think they are well informed, I don’t agree with them and for those that call themselves Christians I would love to understand more about how they reconcile the actual teachings of Jesus Christ with policies that clearly imperil children, widows, orphans, the stranger. Because Jesus is pretty clear that they are the ones we are supposed to welcome and protect, not the rich people.

They have been misled, but their choice is a genuine moral choice.

Not so the lawyers who are performing an anticipatory capitulation to executive orders that are unconstitutional. They are, as Keker, Van Nest and Peters write choosing to “sit back, check your bank balance and watch your freedoms, along with the legal system and the tripartite system of government we should not take for granted, swirl down the drain.”

Perkins Coie, an international law firm which started in my hometown of Seattle, is fighting back, filing a lawsuit to “enjoin the president’s order on constitutional grounds.” Good for them. Good for the law firm who filed the order for them, and the law firms who are filing friends of the court briefs. There is a risk to them. The battle is real, and Trump has power, impunity and a Justice Department who immediately went after Judge Beryl A. Howell of Federal District Court in Washington and tried to disqualify her. She responded that the “attempt to kick her off the case threatened to ‘impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system.’”

Perkins Coie, Judge Howell and others have very clearly chosen the side of good in this skirmish. And I find that heartening in a time when so many are choosing evil in order to solidify their comfort power and security.

I usually write about my father’s family, the Italians. On my mother’s side are the lawyers, for generations. My great grandfather, William Pemberton, was a supreme court justice in Washington State in the 1920s, my grandfather and uncle, both named Joe Pemberton, practiced law in Washington State doing lots of pro bono work. My aunt and sister practice law. All of them fought and fight for good. I grew up on stories of the law being used to protect the unprotected; the farmer, the immigrant, the disabled, the environment. So, I am encouraged to see other Western lawyers stand together to protect the Constitution and the legal system.

As Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton, has Alexander Hamilton say “My client needs a strong defense. You’re the solution.” To which Aaron Burr responds “Who’s your client?” Hamilton says, “The new U.S. Constitution.” The Constitution, and the legal system, still need a strong defense, now more than ever.

Help an author out! My book The Saint and the Drunk A Guide to Making the Big Decisions In Your Life comes out in May and is now available for pre-order in the U.S. Or pre-order here for the UK. Pre-orders really help me market the book.

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