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Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance is disputing a Wednesday claim by President Donald Trump's administration that it can sideline investigations by Bar Associations around the country.

According to Bloomberg Law, the Justice Department is working to "suspend stat bar ethics investigations" targeting DOJ lawyers. The DOJ has clashed with judges across the U.S. and judgment, behavior and legal violations have prompted complaints to state Bar Associations as a result.

According to the proposal, which was posted in the Federal Register on Wednesday, the DOJ wants to do its own internal review of the lawyers rather than the regulatory association. Critics see it as diminishing the power of the Bar Associations as a whole.

Commenting on the report on X, Vance called it "bunk."

"State bars license attorneys and consider misconduct allegations. Historically, state bars have deferred to DOJ‘s internal discipline process as a courtesy, but they are not obligated to, and the AG has zero authority to suspend state bar operations," Vance said about Attorney General Pam Bondi.

"DOJ can’t avoid investigation and incredible allegations of clear, ethical violations, like lying to or misleading judges and failing to follow court orders if state bars want to pursue them," Vance added. "The process is usually long and involves wrist slaps instead of jumping straight to disbarment, but egregious cases deserve serious discipline."

University of Michigan Law School Professor Barbara McQuade agreed.

"All DOJ lawyers are members of a state or DC bar, and subject to its ethics rules and penalties, up to disbarment. Subverting state bar authorities would give DOJ lawyers carte blanche to violate ethics rules," she said about the report.

Self-described "recovering lawyer" Jeff Jacobs commented, "You would think that, given the ethical implications of many of the actions by this DOJ and its state-licensed attorneys, the administration would go out of its way to avoid antagonizing state bar associations."

In January, the Texas Supreme Court ended the 42-year reliance on the American Bar Association for law school accreditation because the ABA has diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements. Florida has now done the same. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) has proposed his own accreditor for Florida law schools instead.

If Bondi's proposal moves forward after a public comment period, “whenever a third party files a bar complaint alleging that a current or former Department attorney violated an ethics rule while engaging in that attorney’s duties for the Department, or whenever bar disciplinary authorities open an investigation into such allegations,” the attorney general “will have the right to review the complaint and the allegations in the first instance,” it states.

Bondi is calling ethics probes into attorneys at the DOJ part of an anti-Trump "weaponization" effort.

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While presiding over the environmental case brought by Ecuadorian Native groups against Texaco-Chevron, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan appointed Seward & Kissel to prosecute environmental lawyer Steven Donziger.[7] Seward & Kissel partner Rita Glavin claimed that the firm did not have a conflict of interest with regards to the case, even though it has worked directly with Chevron at least twice, including as recently as 2018.[8] This resulted in a law student boycott against Seward & Kissel. The boycott began in February 2021 and involves around 300 law students from around 50 law schools. In a letter, the students state that the firm has a conflict of interest in prosecuting Steven Donziger, saying: "We, the undersigned law students, refuse to consider employment with the firm until it withdraws from its conflicted position as Chevron's private prosecutor".[9][10]

https://theintercept.com/2021/04/07/chevron-steven-donziger-law-gibson-dunn-boycott/

no lnx

LAW STUDENTS DENOUNCE CHEVRON’S LAW FIRM OVER STEVEN DONZIGER CASE

Gibson Dunn’s extreme tactics against environmental attorney Steven Donziger spark a backlash.

Sharon LernerSharon Lerner

April 7 2021

ON DAY 608 of his house arrest, Steven Donziger was pacing in his kitchen. Spring was springing outside the window of his Upper West Side apartment, where the temperature had just shot up into the 60s. Nearby, Central Park was filling with picnickers and people tossing Frisbees. But Donziger, the attorney who won an $8.6 billion judgement against Chevron over toxic oil waste in Ecuador, wouldn’t be joining them. Although the criminal contempt charge for which he will soon face trial — which stems from his refusal to hand his computer and cellphone over to the court in 2019 — is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of six months and Donziger has already spent almost 20 months confined, he still cannot leave his apartment.

“I’m a prisoner in my own home,” he said, as he toasted himself a pumpernickel bagel for lunch. “There has never been a lawyer without a criminal record in the federal system who has been detained for even a day pretrial for a misdemeanor.” Donziger said that his left ankle, on which an electronic monitor has been strapped since August 2019, is chafed, and that his family members, including his 14-year-old son, have suffered immeasurably from the ordeal. “I remember the very first day he came home and I had to tell him,” he said. “And I remember saying this is only going to be a couple of weeks until I can sort this out.”

[Related

How the Environmental Lawyer Who Won a Massive Judgment Against Chevron Lost Everything]

Donziger wasn’t being naive to think his house arrest wouldn’t last. No other lawyer had been subjected to this treatment before. And the Southern District of New York had already declined to prosecute the contempt case against him. The decision of the judge, a former corporate lawyer whom many of Donziger’s supporters have accused of being biased in favor of Chevron, to appoint a private firm to prosecute the case already seemed extraordinarily harsh and punitive. Yet almost two years later, the device remains affixed to his body and foremost in his mind. “It sort of permeates my existence, sleeping, eating bathing,” he said.“It’s designed to psychologically demoralize.”

As this latest installment in the bitter battle between Donziger and Chevron drags on, it can seem that the oil giant has succeeded in its long-term goal of demonizing the human rights lawyer, which the company and its allies laid out in 2009. The 2011 judgment of the Ecuadorian court over pollution of the Lago Agrio region of country might have finally put an end to what was already an epic legal struggle.But Chevron refused to pay the judgment or clean up the toxic mess in Ecuador — and instead removed its assets from the country.

Chevron, which is valued at more than $200 billion, also invested some of its massive resources in a legal counteroffensive against Donziger. Led by the law firm Gibson Dunn, the company’s hot pursuit of the attorney has involved hiring private investigators to track him, creating a publication to smear him, and creating a team of hundreds of lawyers to fight him. As a result, Donziger, who spent decades fighting for Indigenous communities and farmers grappling with the pollution resulting from oil extraction, now faces exorbitant fines and legal costs. He has also lost his passport, his income, his law license (though he’s fighting the decision), and his freedom. And, depending on what happens at a trial scheduled for May 10, he may face up to six months in prison.

[Steven Donziger sits for a portrait at his home in Manhattan, NY, where is on house arrest for his work with Amazon, Wednesday, January 15, 2020. ( Annie Tritt for The Intercept)Steven Donziger shows his ankle monitor at his home in New York on January 15, 2020. Photo: Annie Tritt for The Intercept]

Yet the campaign against Donziger is so brutal and unusual it may ultimately backfire on both the oil giant and the law firms that represent it. The pointed attacks on an individual who was fighting against environmental injustice have drawn the attention of attorneys, scholars, human rights organizations, and climate activists, who are discovering not only Chevron’s penchant for revenge but also its history of refusing to take responsibility for the environmental devastation wrought during oil extraction. The irony is not lost on Donziger.

“Because of their behavior, the support I’ve gotten around the world has expanded explosively,” he said. “Millions of people are now learning about this case and Chevron’s abuse of the Ecuadorians who otherwise would not have known about it.”

Tim Hirschel-Burns, a second-year student at Yale Law School, is one of them. Hirschel-Burns, a member of Law Students for Climate Accountability, found out about Donziger’s house arrest in an article that ran in The Intercept in January 2020. “I remember reading that and thinking this can’t be true,” he said. But his research into the case confirmed that Chevron and Gibson Dunn had personally targeted the lawyer after Donziger’s team won in Ecuadorian court. “I found it wild that Chevron could withdraw its assets from Ecuador and not pay anything.”

Now he and others in the group are launching a campaign to get law students around the country to renounce Gibson Dunn for its representation of Chevron in Ecuador and in the litigation against Donziger, as well as for its larger role in the climate crisis.“Gibson Dunn does fossil fuel work on a ton of extremely objectionable projects,” said Hirschel-Burns, who pointed to the law firm’s work on 18 legal cases in which they represent climate polluters or clients who otherwise exacerbate climate change, such as Dakota Access LLC, the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline. Based on that litigation and the firm’s lobbying on behalf of Koch Industries, the student group gave Gibson Dunn an “F” on its climate change scorecard it issued in March.

[NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 15:  Following an $18 billion judgment against Chevron from a court in Ecuador, protesters, some in traditional dress and with black hands representing oil, demonstrate in front of a United States courthouse against the Chevron Corp on October 15, 2013 in New York City. This week Chevron, an American multinational energy corporation, will try to persuade a U.S. judge that Ecuadorean villagers supported by their U.S. lawyer used bribery to win an $18 billion settlement. The contentious environmental case stems from disputes over contamination between 1964 and 1992 at an oil field in northeastern Ecuador operated by Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001.  (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)Protesters, some in traditional Ecuadorian dress and with black hands representing oil, demonstrate against the Chevron Corporation in front of a U.S. courthouse in New York, N.Y., on Oct. 15, 2013. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images]

Today, Law Students for Climate Accountability sent Gibson Dunn a letter asking it to commit to a publicly available ethical standard for its fossil fuel work. “They need to tell us what they would not do for profit,” said Hirschel-Burns. “What is the line they would not cross?”

The law students are also calling out Gibson Dunn’s strategy of shifting its firepower from the environmental case to the individual lawyer presenting it — a tactic that has the power to chill their own ability to represent corporate polluters in the future. “Gibson Dunn’s strategy says we’re going to ruthlessly and frivolously beat down any community or lawyer representing a company that has the gall to take on our clients,” said Aaron Regunberg, another member of Law Students for Climate Accountability. “This suggests that, as lawyers, we can be opening ourselves up to attack.”

Regunberg, who is in his second year at Harvard Law School, noted that the company doesn’t highlight this part of its work when trying to hire young applicants. “When Gibson Dunn does a recruitment event, on their PowerPoint, they’re not talking about, ‘Oh, we masterminded this strategy of going after our opponent’s counsel,’” he said. “They talk about the tiny slice of the pro bono stuff they do. They make it sound like a prestigious thing that’s in line with whatever your worldview is.”

Regunberg hopes that bringing the firm’s objectionable behavior into the light will taint Gibson Dunn to the point where attorneys will be ashamed to work there — a stigma he likens to one that gradually became attached to law firms that work with tobacco companies. “There was a process of that social license being removed,” said Regunberg. “It became less and less OK to say, ‘I’m a prestigious lawyer, a good person, and representing Big Tobacco.”

[Climate Crimes

Read Our Complete Coverage

Climate Crimes]

The group’s campaign, which launches today with the hashtag #DoneWithDunn, follows its past targeting of Paul, Weiss Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, which represents Exxon Mobil and other fossil fuel companies. It also comes on the heels of a recent law student boycott of another firm tied up in the Donziger litigation,Seward & Kissel. Despite having multiple ties to Chevron, that firm is now prosecuting Donziger for his contempt charge. In a successful bid to prolong his detention, the firm labeled him a flight risk.

In a February letter sent to partners in the firm, hundreds of law students took issue with the firm. “The unethical behavior of Seward & Kissel’s Chevron-linked prosecutors opens the door to future cases in which judges give private law firms the authority to prosecute the critics of multinational corporations,” the students wrote, going on to pledge that they wouldn’t consider working for the firm “until it withdraws from its conflicted position as Chevron’s private prosecutor.”

Seward & Kissel and Gibson Dunn did not respond to requests for comment.In an email, a spokesperson for Chevron, James Craig, denied that the company has anything to do with Donziger’s prosecution.“Chevron is not a party to the criminal case, did not initiate the criminal charges, and played no role in the court’s decision to charge Donziger with criminal contempt of court.  The criminal charges were brought by a federal District Court,” Craig wrote in the email, and said that “advocates for human rights do not advance human rights by violating them.” Craig also denied that Chevron withdrew its assets from Ecuador. “They were taken over by Petroecuador, which has operated the fields for nearly 30 years with an abysmal environmental record.”

Meanwhile, the relevance of Donziger’s story to the larger climate crisis has been expounded upon in a growing number of news outlets.Climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted about Donziger’s plight. And 55 Nobel laureates have demanded that he be released from home detention and have the charges against him dropped.

Some of his numerous supporters have recently reached out to Merrick Garland, the new U.S. attorney general, to request that the Department of Justice review Chevron’s attacks on Donziger. “These attacks … have led to a state of affairs widely viewed by the international human rights and environmental community as one of the most serious ongoing human rights abuses for which the United States has yet to answer,” Bob Goodfeld, the interim executive director of Amnesty International USA, and other human rights leaders wrote to Garland in February.

Despite the growing support, Donziger said he fears that he will be convicted and jailed after hisMay trial, which will be held without a jury.“That’s the Chevron plan. They’re going to falsely imprison me,” he said, as he was winding down yet another day inside his apartment. “It will be bad for me. And it could just make things worse for them.”

Seton Hall At-a-Glance

One of the country's leading Catholic universities, Seton Hall University has been developing students in mind, heart and spirit since 1856. Home to over 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students and offering more than 90 rigorous majors, Seton Hall's academic excellence has been singled out for distinction by The Princeton Review, U.S. News & World Report and Bloomberg Businessweek.

Seton Hall's 58-acre main campus is located in the quaint town of South Orange, New Jersey, only 14 miles from Manhattan. The University's nationally-ranked School of Law is located in nearby Newark, N.J. Our new Interprofessional Health Sciences (IHS) campus, situated in the towns of Clifton and Nutley, N.J., opened in July 2018. The IHS campus houses Seton Hall's College of Nursing, School of Health and Medical Sciences, as well as Hackensack Meridian Health’s Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine.

https://climate.law.columbia.edu/

The no lnx

Sabin Center develops legal techniques to fight climate change, trains students and lawyers in their use, and provides up-to-date resources on key topics in climate change law and regulation.

New Sabin Center White Paper Assesses the New York State Executive Branch's Authority to Enact a Moratorium on the Permitting of Consolidated Proof-of-Work Cryptocurrency Mining Facilities, by Jacob Elkin, March 21, 2022

Renewable Energy Projects Face Opposition in 49 States, Local Restrictions in 31 States, by Jacob Elkin, March 15, 2022

Recent Publications

Regulation of Polyfluoroalkyl Chemicals in New York, by Michael B. Gerrard and Edward McTiernan, New York Law Journal, March 9, 2022

Evaluating Climate Risk in NEPA Reviews: Current Practices and Recommendations for Reform, by Romany Webb, Michael Panfil, Stephanie H. Jones, and Dena Adler, February 15, 2022

Biden's climate promises require oil and gas leasing reform, op-ed by Romany Webb, The Hill, February 3, 2022

Politics v. science: How President Trump's war on science impacted public health and environmental regulation, by Romany Webb and Lauren Kurtz, ScienceDirect, January 27, 2022

The Biden administration's first year: Slow and steady does not win this race, op-ed by Lauren Kurtz and Romany Webb, The Hill, January 20, 2022

News and Events

Events: Argentina's Hydrocarbon Border Expansion: The rise of climate litigation against offshore fossil fuel exploitation, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Register here.

Compensation for a Just Energy Transition to a Zero-Carbon World: Practices and Principles in International (Investment) Law and Domestic Law, April 14, 2022. Register here.

Sabin Center-UNEP Annual Conference on Global Climate Litigation, April 19-20, 2022. Register here.

News: Paper looks at NY state authority on climate rules, Observer-Review, March 29, 2022

Columbia Law School Pushes Governor to Pause Permits for Cryptomining, Finger Lakes Daily News, March 21, 2022

Climate Law Blog

Guest Post: Brazil Will Have First Climate Litigation Trials in the Supreme Court, by Isabela Soares Bicalho, Gabriel Mantelli, Maria Antonia Tigre and Carmem Añon Brasolin, March 28, 2022

Key Elements of the SEC's Proposed Climate-Related Disclosure Rule, by Romany Webb, March 23, 2022

Australian Federal Court Dismisses the Novel Duty of Care Previously Found in Sharma, by Maria Antonia Tigre, March 21, 2022

https://www.climateone.org/audio/enablers-firms-behind-fossil-fuel-falsehoods

february 11th, 2022

Public perception is important to any company, and fossil fuel companies are no different. Every year, they spend large amounts of money to make sure that the public is abundantly aware of all of the work fossil fuel companies are doing to help with the transition to clean energy. The problem is, the money spent on the messaging outpaces the money spent on the decarbonization. 

PR firms, ad agencies, and law firms work behind the scenes to protect the fossil fuel industry and slow down the clean energy transition. Despite the industry having knowledge of the climate crisis as early as 1959, they continue to resist any change. 

For example, many large oil and gas companies say they support a price on carbon pollution.  Yet large oil companies invest a small fraction of their profits promoting carbon pricing policies and low carbon energy. The House oversight committee reports that less than half of 1% of their lobbying effort over the past decade focused on carbon pricing. The committee also reports that from 2010 to 2018, BP spent about 2% of its capital expenditures on low carbon investments.  Exxon spent less than a quarter of 1% on cleaner energy. Jamie Henn, founder and director ofClean Creatives, gives some insight into these expenditures:

“I think it tells a story that big oil’s supposed commitment to climate action is little more than greenwashing. ExxonMobil just made record profits because of high gas prices.  And what are they doing with it?  They are telling their shareholders that they are going to increase oil and gas production, and they're doing a $10 billion stock buyback to reward their shareholders.  In comparison ExxonMobil spent maybe upwards of about $300 million on algae research, which over the last 10 years, so that's about 30 million a year maybe.  Yet that's the focus of all their advertising.”

Despite how much money these companies have to spend, they are still losing the battle of public perception. 60% of Americans say that fossil fuel companies are to blame for the climate crisis and about 50% of them want them to pay damages.Christina Arena, former VP at the global PR firm Edelman, argues that proponents of clean energy can use this reality to help deal with the climate crisis.

“This industry is kind of losing control of the narrative, even though it is trying so hard to direct it.  And so, I think that opens the door for clean tech marketers and clean energy marketers to come in with a more compelling narrative.  Tell your story better be more creative.  Capture America's hearts and minds.”

Law firms also help fossil fuel companies' limit their legal liabilities. Michaela Anang, a research coordinator for Law Students for Climate Accountability and a law student at UC Davis, says the group grew out of a desire by law students to bring more scrutiny to their future employers. 

“The top 100 law firms which we called the Vault 100 firms or Big Law are significantly contributing to furthering issues within our climate as opposed to mitigating those issues which we as students and as future legal professionals hope that they would be moving towards. ” 

Related Links:

:{Law Firm Climate Change Scorecard:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;white-space:pre-wrap"):}:

:{Scientists’ Letter to Ad Agencies:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;white-space:pre-wrap"):}:

fun fact Louisiana punishing law student clinic in EJ Bayous Br pipeline fight?! see crit infra tulane U? bucket brigade

cedar pt vs ufw

Party name: Property Law Professors for good guys

BRIEF AMICUS CURIAE OF PROPERTY LAW PROFESSORS IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS

JOHN D. ECHEVERRIA Counsel of Record VERMONT LAW SCHOOL 164 Chelsea Street South Royalton, Vermont 05068 Jecheverria@vermontlaw.edu (802) 831-1386

BRIEF OF LEGAL HISTORIANS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS BETHANY R. BERGERUniversity of Connecticut School of Law 65 Elizabeth Street Hartford, CT 06105 Bethany.Berger@uconn.edu February 12, 2021 KATHARINE M. MAPES * GWENDOLYN A. HICKS *Counsel of Record Spiegel & McDiarmid LLP 1875 Eye Street., NW, Suite 700 Washington, DC 20006 (202) 879-4000 Katharine.Mapes@spiegelmcd.com

beware code

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/law-firms-climate-change/

For too long, law firms have been given carte blanche for their contributions to the climate crisis: They lobby on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, file the paperwork necessary for carbon-emitting projects, and litigate cases against indigenous and frontline communities. With over 1,500 lawyers in offices around the world, Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher LLP is regarded as one of the top law firms in the United States.

Like many of its peers, Gibson Dunn profits from squashing class action lawsuits and labor organizing drives, keeping shareholders from reforming corporate practices and debtors from getting their day in court, and shielding US companies from accountability for their actions overseas and from regulation at home. Even by the standards of the legal industry, however, Gibson Dunn’s behavior is notorious. In 2007, the Montana Supreme Court rebuked the firm for engaging in “actual malice” and “legal thuggery,” and a Delaware judge recently described its pretrial practices as constituting “fraud.”

But Gibson Dunn’s behavior goes even further. It spent more than a decade defending Chevron in a lawsuit brought by indigenous communities whose homeland was poisoned by an oil spill in Ecuador. When Ecuadorian courts awarded those indigenous communities a $9.5 billion judgment, Gibson Dunn was involved in overturning that ruling in a corporate-friendly US court, leading to the prosecution of Steven Donziger, a human rights attorney who represented the Ecuadorian plaintiffs. Gibson Dunn’s involvement in the Chevron case is a chilling example of the lengths the firm is willing to go to represent the fossil fuel industry and silence anyone in the way.

And Gibson Dunn’s record on climate change is unapologetically awful. Law Students for Climate Accountability (LSCA), an organization that scores law firms based on their environmental activities, gave the firm an F this year, the lowest score possible. In addition to its involvement in dozens of climate change cases, Gibson Dunn has lobbied for Koch Industries and represented the corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, a project that would violate indigenous rights. (In another affront to native sovereignty, Gibson Dunn has also represented those seeking to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act). Over the last decade, the firm has brought in nearly $27 billion in fossil fuel and energy revenue, with no sign of slowing down even as the need to halt and reverse carbon emissions becomes all the more urgent.

In April 2021, dozens of law student organizations signed a letter from LSCA calling on Gibson Dunn to change its contracting standards. Following Gibson Dunn’s refusal to engage with this petition, in December 2021, LSCA announced a boycott so that individual students too can announce that they are#DoneWithDunn. Meanwhile, Gibson Dunn strives to maintain a liberal, even progressive image: One of the firm’s star litigators is vocally anti-Trump, even as he heartily defends oil and gas companies. Indebted law students are enticed by high pay, diversity initiatives and pro bono opportunities, but may not be aware that their first work assignments may include overturning Covid eviction moratoriums or defeating suits for toxic exposure. In increasing numbers, however, young workers are demanding that their would-be employers disentangle from work furthering environmental and social catastrophe.

When it comes to the climate crisis, business as usual won’t cut it, and nowhere is that more true than in the legal profession. Gibson Dunn is but one of many law firms with a terrible track record on climate, yet this boycott from LSCA is a crucial step in forcing Big Law to take responsibility for how it normalizes, entrenches, and exacerbates Big Carbon work that imperils our planet and its people. By doing so, we join a movement already changing norms at ad agencies, financial institutions, and tech companies, all of which are the sites for organizing to end profiteering from carbon extraction.

Reshaping the economic and social incentives for individual workers, their companies, and indeed entire industries is no small order. But this is exactly what is asked of our generation. Law firms are not leading the way on a just transition toward renewable energy; the only way they will is if we hold their feet to the very fires they are fanning.

Leehi YonaLeehi Yona is a PhD student in environment and resources and a Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University. Her research is on climate change science, policy, and justice.

David...

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drilled 320

elite Law Students to Paul, Weiss: Drop ExxonMobil

Students at some of the nation’s top law schools are demanding that law firm Paul, Weiss, a top U.S. law firm, drop ExxonMobil as a client.

Restricting Representation

New laws are hardly the only method Louisiana elected officials have used to stifle residents’ opposition to industry.

In 1997, former Gov. Mike Foster pressured the Louisiana Supreme Court to trim the sails of student law clinics after the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic helped St. James Parish residents fight a polyvinyl chloride plant the chemical giant Shintech wanted to build in Convent.

Foster badly wanted to see the Shintech plant built. He mocked the plant’s two most vocal opponents, Emelda West and Pat Melancon of Convent, as “a bunch of housewives.”

Calls to Shintech seeking comment were not returned.

Former Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster pushed for Tulane University to be defunded after students in the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic helped Convent residents challenge air and water permits for a proposed polyvinyl chloride plant. (Bryan S. Berteaux/The Times-Picayune)

In addition to challenging Shintech’s air and water permits, Convent residents — with the help of Tulane — filed a complaint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claiming the state violated the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act when it approved the project.

The complaint became the first key test of an executive order signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1994 that aimed to address the fact that communities of color bore a disproportionate burden of pollution.

Foster was apoplectic. He encouraged Tulane alumni and business leaders to reconsider their financial support for the university.

Several industry lobbying groups, meanwhile, urged the Louisiana Supreme Court, which oversees student law practice in the state, to investigate the law clinic.

Student law practice allows legal novices to gain hands-on experience, while providing legal assistance to those who would not otherwise have access.

The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the state’s most powerful business lobby, had recently helped three pro-business justices win seats on the Supreme Court. The chief justice, Pascal Calogero, was up for election the following year.

At LABI’s urging, the court began investigating the Tulane clinic in 1997. As the election heated up, Calogero — and all but one justice — voted to restrict student law assistance. The new rules banned the representation of any community organization affiliated with a national organization — like Greenpeace, the Sierra Club or the NAACP and prohibited students and supervising lawyers from initiating contact with potential clients.

The new rules also placed limits on how much residents could earn and still receive student representation. A family of three, for example, could not get assistance if they made more than $13,650 annually.

The head of the Association of American Law Schools called the new requirements “the most restrictive student practice rule in the nation.”

Emelda West, of the St. James Citizens for Jobs and the Environment, speaks in front of the Governor’s Mansion during a protest against the governor’s threats against the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic in 1997. (Tim Mueller/The Advocate)

Ironically, the new rules — which have since been relaxed some — came too late to save Shintech’s plant. The company announced in 1998 it had scratched its plan, opting instead for a much smaller facility in Iberville Parish.

The Tulane clinic has continued to garner the ire of industry over the last two decades. In 2010, Adley introduced another bill aimed at stopping the clinic from going after chemical plants. It would have yanked state funding from Tulane if its law clinic sued a government agency. As the bill was introduced, Dan Borné, then head of Louisiana Chemical Association, said: “My board acted on taking an aggressive approach toward the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. This is part of that approach.”

But Adley’s bill to defund Tulane was ill-timed. One month earlier, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Lawmakers were concerned that if the bill passed, residents affected by the spill wouldn’t be able to get legal assistance from Tulane. The bill failed.

Lisa Jordan, director of the clinic, co-wrote the civil rights petition to the EPA on behalf of Convent residents two decades ago. Even though the case put a crimp on the clinic, she’s proud of taking on the fight. “It was hard, and it had a really good result for the clients,” she said. “And because it told me this is such important work, even when you don’t necessarily succeed ... to give people a legal voice that they otherwise couldn’t have had.”

Monique Harden, of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice who co-wrote the civil rights petition, said the repeated assaults on the clinic exemplify how Louisiana officials tend to react to environmental uprisings.

“There is this systemwide hostility to people fighting back,” Harden said. “They want to cut support. But not just cut support, cut your remedy.”

==

THE RISE OF THE CONSERVATIVE LEGAL MOVEMENT: THE BATTLE FOR CONTROL OF THE LAW, by Steven M. Teles. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. 385pp.  Cloth. $35.00/£19.95.  ISBN: 9780691122083.

Reviewed by Roy B. Flemming, Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University.  Email: roy [at] politics.tamu.edu.

Sure, it was a coincidence but the timing could not have been better.  The morning before I sat down to write this review, I received a solicitation letter from the Federalist Society asking me for a donation.  The letter signed by Eugene B. Meyer, the organization’s president, pointedly quoted Steven Teles’ comment from his book that the “Federalist Society represents, without a doubt, the most vigorous, durable, and well-ordered organization to emerge from . . . modern conservatism’s political strategy.”

When Teles set out to document the stumbles, turning points, and successes of the conservative counter-mobilization against legal liberalism, his “first real breakthrough” came after Meyer let him loose to rummage through the Society’s internal documents. Other entrepreneurs in the conservative legal movement like Henry Manne, William “Chip” Mellor, and Clint Bolickfully cooperated with Teles, answering his questions and providing him with background documents.  Equally important, pivotal financial patrons of the movement, like the Olin Foundation, followed suit.  Finally, Teles decided to organize his research around the themes of strategy and entrepreneurship which he credits to conversations with Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation. No published study about the conservative legal movement of which I am aware can compete with the information, detail, perspectives, and stories that Teles has packed into his book.

Teles’ major stories pivot around the formation and evolution of the Federalist Society, the emergence and institutionalization of law and economics as part of law school curriculums, the Center for Individual Rights, and the Institute for Justice.  Nested within these narratives are vignettes of other players and organizations that illustrate how patrons and entrepreneurs learned from their mistakes and redirected their strategies.  Teles quickly alerts his readers that he not concerned with organizations like the American Center for Law and Justice that have been involved in religious or social conservative litigation.  Nor is he interested in the thicket of conservative think tanks that sprouted up during the past three decades or in the proliferation of litigating groups with traditional pro-business agendas or interests in tort reform.  The price of Teles’ tight focus, however, is easily off-set by the many benefits generated by his in-depth discussions.

The idea for a conservative legal counter-mobilization first surfaced in Lewis Powell’s  confidential memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce in 1971 shortly before Nixon nominated him to the Supreme Court.  (Powell’s memo can be found at [*633] www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/personality/print/sources_document13.html).  Entitled “Attack of [sic] the American Free Enterprise System,” Powell argued America’s economic system was under “broad attack.”  The “most disquieting” attacks were not those made by the usual left-wing or socialist suspects but those from “the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.”  Powell urged the Chamber to confront the criticism especially in universities and colleges (including a “balancing of faculties”) and redirect the public agenda by creating incentives for “independent scholars who believe in the system” to publish more often and more widely.  In a very real sense, Powell’s ideas foreshadowed Manne’s campaign to create law and economics centers in law schools and the Olin Foundation’s initiatives aimed at the elite schoolsas well as the network of conservative faculty and students created by the Federalist Society.

In a section called a “Neglected Opportunity in the Courts,” Powell cautioned that liberal and far left groups had been “far more astute” in recognizing the “judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic, and political change.”  This could be a “vast area of opportunity” for the Chamber and the soon-to-be associate justice recommended that it hire “highly competent” staff attorneys to file amicus briefs in the Supreme Court or under special circumstances retain “lawyers of national standing and reputation” to participate in Chamber-sponsored law suits.  The American Civil Liberties Union, civil rights groups, and liberal public interest law outfits like those created by Ralph Nader, offered off-the-shelf templates that conservatives could use to organize their counter-mobilization.  As Teles explains, Powell implied that the fundamental problem was an imbalance in the interests appearing in courtrooms and that it could be righted by recruiting pro-business if not conservative “repeat players” and by a revival of “judicial restraint” on the bench.

Things did not play out as simply as Powell intimated.  Following the formation of the Pacific Legal Foundation in 1973 with the support from the California Chamber of Commerce, several other regional foundations were soon created under the auspices of the National Legal Center for the Public Interest (NLCPI).  This network was organized geographically, not functionally, and held together by interlocking directorships.  The result was “organizational turmoil” because as one insider told Teles “NLCPI had all the structural flaws of the Articles of Confederation” (p.63).  Equally telling, the emphasis on filing amicus briefs displaced coherent litigation strategies and put the foundations on fund-raising treadmills. Most damning of all for Powell’s business-led strategy were unexpected tensions between business interests and conservative ideology.  As Adam Smith cautioned long ago, business interests are not synonymous with the public interest however it is defined.

Teles’ cameo study of the Mountain States Legal Foundation illustrates the point.  With reliable funding from Joseph Coors, a long-time patron of right-wing causes, effective leadership in the early years by James Watts who later became President Reagan’s Interior [*634] Secretary, and a shared sense of grievance arising from the “Sagebrush Rebellion” in the Western states over the control of federal lands, the Mountain States Legal Foundation had several built-in advantages.  Nevertheless it faltered because its business allies expected returns on their “investments” and the foundation often filed amicus briefs in response to particular contributions or to encourage new ones.  Matters came to a head when the foundation challenged on First Amendment grounds Denver’s grant of an exclusive cable television franchise to a local businessman, a grant widely supported by the Mile High City’s business community.  As an insider explained to Teles, the foundation’s suit “gored very powerful interests there, well connected to the Republican Party . . . Joe Coors resigned from our board [saying] . . . ’I founded MSLF . . . to take on the Sierra Club, not to do this sort of thing’” (p.65).

Soul-searching about the strategy behind the first generation of public interest firms began in the late 1970s when Michael Horowitz (subsequently chief counsel of the Office of Management and Budget during the first Reagan administration) submitted a highly critical report to the Scaife Foundation.  The Horowitz Report redefined the goals of the legal counter-mobilization.  Litigation alone could not dislodge legal liberalism.  Ties to business interests tethered conservative public interest firms and held them back from taking the moral high ground. Amicus briefs were “pufferies intended for naïve audiences of donors and not truly doing meaningful work” (p.71).  The aversion to basing organizations in Washington, D.C. had to be jettisoned in order to confront liberalism on its own turf.  Most important of all, the movement needed to redefine itself along clear, consistent libertarian lines with long-term strategies that would appeal to underdogs caught up in unresponsive legal institutions like black beauticians struggling under state regulations or lower middle class whites whose houses were threatened by eminent domain.  Conservatives had to become idealistic “good guys” limiting government and empowering civil society. 

The Horowitz Report doused cold water on patron enthusiasm for funding conservative public interest law firms but in time the foundations used the report to restructure how these firms operated  Two of these second generation firms are the subject of a separate chapter in which Teles compares the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), best known for its battles against affirmative action policies at the University of Texas and University of Michigan, and the Institute for Justice (IJ) whose fame soared after it turned defeat in KELO v. CITY OF NEW LONDON into a public policy success.  While the two firms differ significantly in many ways, they share important similarities.  For one thing, judicial activism no longer is a dirty word.  Instead both firms see judicial activism as a means of reviving old rights to protect the conservative goal of limited government; property rights and eminent domain offer just one example.  Clint Bolick (2007), co-founder of the Institute for Justice, recently argued in favor of judicial activism in a new book published by the libertarian Cato Institute.  The firms, seeing the value in an activist bench, are accordingly more strategic in the cases they select and [*635] keep a steady eye on whether a case has the potential to change the public policy agenda or the law.

Horowitz, like Powell, stressed that a “key site” to contest legal liberalism was the university.  In three chapters, Teles traces the winding, upward path of the law and economics movement and the seemingly inexorable growth of the Federalist Society.  The law and economics story has two parts.  The first deals with constructing the “mother ship” at the University of Chicago and the travails of Henry Manne to build law and economic centers at other universities and his final success at George Mason University.

Chicago legitimized law and economics.  The JOURNAL OF LAW AND ECONOMICS, the sub-field’s first journal, started there and was later edited by Ronald Coase who won a Nobel Prize for his work.  Chicago’s highly influential Anti-Trust Project provided fellowships supported by the Volker Fund, attracted law professors like Robert Bork, and revolutionized the field. Richard Posner with impeccable establishment credentials (Harvard Law and former Supreme Court clerk for Justice William Brennan) wrote ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW (published in 1973 and now in its seventh edition) in which he challenged myriad shibboleths in traditional legal research.  In the meantime, Manne spread the gospelby pushing for new centers at other universities, aggressively marketed law and economics with help from theLiberty Fundby holding regular conferences that identified ambitious scholars and brought them into the conservative fold, and through the Economics Institute for Federal Judgesintroduced numerous judges to the fundamentals of micro-economics. 

The second part of the story focuses on the Olin Foundation’s strategic deployment of its largesse aimed directly at faculty and students in elite law schools (most of Manne’s centers were at lesser-ranked schools) which solidified the stature of the law and economics sub-field and raised its status as a distinctive alternative to traditional and contemporary legal scholarship.  Law and economics was not Olin’s first choice, however.  As an official explained to Teles: “I would have preferred to do something in constitutional law but . . . [i]f you said to a dean that you wanted to fund conservative constitutional law, he would reject the idea out of hand . . . Law and economics is neutral, but it has a philosophical thrust in the direction of free markets and limited government.  That is, like many disciplines, it seems neutral but it isn’t in fact” (p.189).  Olin’s gamble on law and economics paid off handsomely in ways that Lewis Powell would have applauded.  At Harvard, Olin’s support for law and economics provided money, academic panache, and camouflage for Harvard’s president who wanted to stymie the critical legal studies movement and mollify angry alumni in corporate law firms upset by the havoc they felt the “crits” were creating within the profession.  Law and economics raised the research bar for hiring and tenure decisions and offered alternatives to law schools that altered the balance of power in their faculties.

The Federalist Society rang repeated alarms within the legal profession that Harvard Law was “out of control” and [*636] from its beginning the Society has been concerned generally about the placement of conservatives in law schools and out of them.  Teles maintains in his chapter on the Society, however, that over the course of its twenty-five year history the Federalist Society has carved out an influential niche for itself bylimitingits attention to creating and fostering complex networks of lawyers, faculty, law students, and foundation patrons that are held together by an emphasis on serious debate and discourse over ideas that challenge legal liberalism while avoiding right-wing factionalism.  Eschewing the establishment of an in-house litigation center early on, the Society also decided not turn itself into a conservative clone of the American Bar Association despite earlier feelings that perhaps it should and despite its persistent criticisms of the ABA.  These strategic choices (there were others at critical moments) were made by a stable, self-perpetuating cadre of long-serving leaders, including Eugene Meyer, who were present at the Society’s founding and are aligned with foundation executives and senior figures from the legal community. 

Teles neither constructs a theory of the rise of the conservative legal movement nor tests one.  Conceptual references are employed at various times but largely to locate the study within the existing literature.  This by no means diminishes Teles’ accomplishment.  Each of his multiple interlocking stories of the pas de troisbetween different conservative entrepreneurs, their patrons and financiers, and the institutions they either created or tried to change took place over several years and demanded clear precise detailing, which they duly received.  Teles’ book is an important reference and the chief departure point for anybody seriously wanting to understand one of the most important transformations in contemporary legal history and politics.

REFERENCES:

Bolick, Clint. 2007. DAVID’S HAMMER: THE CASE FOR AN ACTIVIST JUDICIARY. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute.

Posner, Richard. 1973. ECONOMICS OF LAW.  Boston: Little Brown and Company.

CASE REFERENCE:

KELO v. CITY OF NEW LONDON, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)

*********************

Roy B. Flemming.

http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/teles0708.htm

starr's kirkland & ellis firm stocked B2 justice dept

GMU also directed some of the Koch foundation funding to its Law and Economics Center (LEC) at its School of Law

GMU law school alums seems to have influence (on climate?):

ALEC publishes its own materials as well, including a "Climate Change Overview for State Legislators" which downplays the science and risks of global warming and exaggerates the costs of addressing it. The Overview was written by Daniel Simmons, who moved from ALEC to become AEA's Director of State Affairs. Simmons was at the Mercatus Institute before ALEC and is a graduate of the George Mason University School of Law.

Daniel Simmons.300 Former Director of the Natural

Resources Task Force at American Legislative Exchange

Council (ALEC).

Simmons is now AEA’s Director of State Affairs.

American Shiria:

Religious Right leaders are coming together to form yet another law school to train future lawyers of the conservative movement. The right-wing Alliance Defense Fund is helping Louisiana College, a Southern Baptist institution, start the Paul Pressler School of Law, which will join Liberty University, Regent University and others in providing politicized training to the next generation of Religious Right lawyers.

Pressler’s ties to the Alliance Defense Fund will be similar to the Liberty University School of Law’s partnership with Liberty Counsel and the Regent UniversitySchool of Law’s (originally Oral Roberts University’s Coburn School of Law) alliance with the American Center for Law and Justice. As Sarah Posner notes, such law schools intend to “teach the ‘biblical’ foundations of the law” and create “lawyers unafraid to inject their particular Christian beliefs, not only into the public square, but quite deliberately into legislation, policy, and jurisprudence.”