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Gen. Zia ul-Haq as arch-villain Snidely Whiplash. (AP File Photo)
From The Asian Reporter, V17, #47 (November 20, 2007), page 7.
Lawyers hit the streets, riot cops hit them
There’re times I’m proud of my profession. Really. It’s possible.
Take those attorneys down for anxious mothers and exhausted wives in deep legal blue from last summer’s ugly roundup of Mexican fruit-packers. Take Brandon Mayfield, our own Portland Muslim, mistaken by our FBI for a 2004 Madrid train bomber, now humbly persisting through the federal courts. Not for money, but on principle.
Or take Angel Lopez, a former Oregon Bar Association president (decode as: mainstream muscle plus-plus) pero also the ultimo go-to guapo for metro Asian and Spanish-speaking families full-body slammed by our criminal justice system.
So pride is possible. But you’ve got to have your ear near the ground. The proverbial place ethnic minority rubber meets the road. Only there, only then, will you hear about everyday lawyerly heroics. Around our kitchen tables. Neither the State Bar or our American Civil Liberties Union hands out trophies for the very ordinary way some of our extraordinary professionals have to take care of their communities. And earn our respect.
On the whole, lawyers are not a brave bunch. Loud all right, and argumentative for sure, but only for the sake of argument. For the side you’re on. Convinced by the conceit of our own reasonableness. (And of course your retainers).
Not big believers, attorneys aren’t.
But now, look at Pakistan lawyers. Suits fronting down cops. Bloody beatings on main street.
In Pakistan, a place most Americans associate with sheltering al-Qaeda and Talibanis. Pakistan, the home of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, Third World nuke genius and arms marketplace entrepreneur. Indeed, before President Bush deputized Pakistan as America’s Numero Uno Ally in The War Against Global Terrorism, we knew the place as home of one ugly Generalissimo after another, each as diabolical as any Old Hollywood villain.
Pakistan’s stand-up attorneys
They’re making the news, those Pakistani lawyers. We need to look. And learn.
Let’s reconstruct what went down. And of course, I exaggerate. Naturally I embellish. I am almost obliged by oath to do so. Still, who wouldn’t argue that Pakistan’s lawyerly crowd has been super cool. "Tip top-drawer" — as the former-Imperial Brit Raj, who left Pakistan those unbelievably bad powdered white wigs, would say.
It all started six months ago when Pakistan’s President Gen. Pervez Musharraf got nervous about how the nation’s very independent Supreme Court Chief Justice might opine about the general’s upcoming maneuver to remain in office waaay past his legal term. Itchy Gen. Musharraf predictably pre-empted anything Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry might say by summarily firing him. Eight other smart-mouth justices got the boot for good measure.
His Honor just as characteristically countered that Pakistan’s President lacks Constitutional authority for executive removal of a supreme court justice. The President said he did, and his army agreed. And the Chief Justice got arrested. And the Constitution got suspended. And none of this was too awfully out of the ordinary. Anybody’s ordinary. It’s ordinarily so for Pakistan, and just as normal for any society. Business-as-usual matters most for those paid well to serve the sovereign. The apparatus of management. It’s all about securing steady salaries.
Apparatchiks — lawyers, accountants, civil servants — are not a rowdy crowd. Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department beta-male bureaucrats, and Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department boys, are only now aaall up in arms, hair standing on end, but they’re four years too late for thousands of sorrowing American families and millions of Iraqi ones. It’s easy to imagine dozens of President Bush’s bureaucrats talking trash the morning after he’s gone. Easy to imagine. Easy to do when there’s no personal consequences for mouthing off and standing up to power.
And that’s what makes those three- piece suited Pakistani lawyers fronting down those riot cops so remarkable. They risk head-bashing and disbarring, they risk personal imprisonment for not going along, and family eviction for not paying rent. Remarkable.
Maybe someone should offer a Continuing Legal Ed workshop on it. On courage. Three CLE credits for half a Saturday. Maybe make it mandatory. Replace those affirmative action classes annoying so many Oregon lawyers. Count them toward our professional ethics requirements. If you can’t be courageous — if you know not enough about either justice or commitment to justice — forget it.
Al’hamdulillah, those Pakistani lawyers. You’ve got to love them.