[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 16, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S545-S546]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            PRO BONO REPRESENTATION FOR GUANTANAMO DETAINEES

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I note another Senator in the Chamber 
waiting to speak, so I will be relatively brief in comments on one 
other subject.
  I note that an official in the Department of Justice has challenged 
the attorneys who have been doing pro bono

[[Page S546]]

work for detainees at Guantanamo, raising an issue as to whether that 
representation is proper and raising the suggestions that their 
corporate employers might be interested in reconsidering their 
employment based on their representation of the detainees at 
Guantanamo.
  It is a little hard to understand how anyone in 2007 would raise a 
question about pro bono work being done by lawyers who may be 
undertaking or who are undertaking unpopular causes. That has been the 
long tradition of the legal profession.
  The first noteworthy example was Andrew Hamilton, a famous 
Philadelphia lawyer who represented Peter Zenger at the time when there 
were hostilities between the United States and Great Britain. Andrew 
Hamilton took on an unpopular cause and set the standard for lawyers to 
do just that.
  I recollect the trials under the Smith Act of the Communists where 
lawyers of the highest repute undertook the representation of the 
defendants in those cases, a highly unpopular matter. And in the 
Philadelphia prosecution of the Smith Act, some of the most 
distinguished lawyers of the city, again, undertook that 
representation.
  A lawyer's duty is to undertake the representation of a client, and 
it is up to the court to make a decision on whether the attorney is 
right or the attorney is wrong.
  This challenge by a Department of Defense official is in line with 
the recent position of the Department of Justice in seeking to limit 
the right to counsel for corporate officials who are being 
investigated, with the Department of Justice under the so-called 
Thompson memorandum taking the position that charges might be increased 
if the firm and the individual did not waive the attorney-client 
privilege. Then the Department of Justice objected to the firm paying 
the legal fees.
  A Federal judge in the Southern District of New York has already 
declared it unconstitutional to challenge the payment of the legal 
fees.
  I have introduced legislation which would revise the Department of 
Justice policy even further than the revision by Deputy Attorney 
General McNaulty in the so-called McNaulty memorandum.
  But when lawyers undertake the representation of individuals in 
unpopular causes, they are entitled to praise and not criticism.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Pryor). The Senator from Missouri.

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