Pick a Side

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. Listen for more Get full access to Fierce Grace at speirolo.substack.com/subscribe