Not too many years ago, the bar was one of the pillars of the Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln was the patron saint of lawyers; my father had a lovely portrait of Lincoln, painted on wood, in his law office for many years. But times have changed: now, a large majority of lawyers are Democrats. (Their secretaries, on the other hand, are more likely to be Republicans.) This is part of the broader reshuffling of our political alignment.
Lawyers have become Democrats, not because they have been reading Marx or Foucault, or because Barack Obama made brilliant arguments (just kidding), but rather because they realized that it is the Democrats who are on their side, financially. Whenever Congress enacts a sweeping law like OSHA, ERISA, NEPA, Dodd-Frank, and so on, and whenever a federal agency issues a new set of regulations pursuant to one of those statutes, every company in America has to figure out how to comply with the new rules. So they hire lawyers. The Democratic Party has become a cash machine for the legal profession.
These days, there are not many liberals. Most Democrats are fanatical left-wingers, even among lawyers. At least, that is what this mailing from the Minnesota State Bar Association, along with its affiliates in Hennepin County (Minneapolis) and Ramsey County (Saint Paul) suggests:
Where to begin? Donald Trump is a new George III! Are they kidding?
More specifically, “sowing distrust in electoral processes?” How about the fact that no Republican since George H.W. Bush has been elected President without Democrats claiming that the election was rigged and he is an illegitimate president? How about countless Democrats, starting with Hillary Clinton, alleging that Donald Trump was an “illegitimate president” following the 2016 election? How about the fact that the Democratic Party, across the board, has taken the position that Donald Trump is now an illegitimate president, and therefore everything he does must be opposed by all means, legal and illegal? Of which, this program by the Minnesota State Bar Association is one of many thousands of instances.
Executive power? Trump’s executive orders have generally been upheld, once they got past the initial guard of judge-shopped district court judges who are loyal to the Democratic Party. Unlike Barack Obama, who lost several cases in a 9-0 Supreme Court, holding that he had acted unconstitutionally, Trump has generally fared well in the appellate courts. And the real abuse has not been on Trump’s part, it has been the actions of rogue Democratic Party judges who have issued (now illegal) national injunctions to block Trump administration actions on policy grounds, thus frustrating the will of voters.
The rule of law? The worst violation of the rule of law in American history, by far, was Joe Biden’s nullification of our immigration laws, allowing more than 10 million illegals to flood into our country. President Trump has restored the rule of law by doing his best to expel those law-violators.
And of course, “judicial independence” does not mean rogue partisan judges purporting to block an elected administration’s actions, usually without even hearing arguments from that administration. It is a safe bet that the Minnesota Bar Association would not have hailed “judicial independence” if Republican judges had tried to block, ex parte, actions by the Obama administration or the Biden administration, even though many such actions were in fact illegal.
“Marginalized communities”: The Bar Association here adopts the unconstitutional practice of favoring some ethnic groups over others. I have no idea who is “marginalized,” but race discrimination is illegal. Democratic Party lawyers don’t accept this reality. And as for immigration, the President has full legal authority to restrict it in any manner he considers appropriate. Sadly, the fact that “lawyers” at the State Bar Association do not know this isn’t surprising.
And finally, as to the role of the bar: should lawyers “defend the rule of law”? Absolutely. For instance, by exposing and objecting to illegal orders issued by rogue district court judges, and by calling out the leftists who try to erode the rule of law by supporting illegal immigration, and by letting criminals get away with crime. If lawyers did this, they would begin to regain the trust of the American people. But that day is a long way off.
