by Matt Barr

Should John Dean be disbarred?

A new thought inspired by the previous post. Dean wrote:

[A] Court decision to docket the case should raise deep suspicions. This, after all, is the Court that installed Bush and Cheney in the White House with its dubious Bush v. Gore ruling. Delaying this case until the backside of Bush's second term could give the White House a pass through the mid-term elections as well.

Such delay, then, would suggest complicity by the conservative bloc (those most likely to take the case) of the Court in Administration crimes.

As cathartic as publishing this may be, it may not be such a good idea:

The Court has disbarred at least one attorney who, in correspondence sent to, or motions filed with, state judges, state administrative officials, and state and federal prosecutors, made baseless accusations of crime and corruption against several judges. See In re Palmisano, 70 F.3d 483 (7th Cir. 1995). In a federal disbarment proceeding for the same attorney, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals found that such ex parte communications warrant disbarment in federal as well as state court. See id.

Both the Illinois Supreme Court and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled that attorneys do not have a First Amendment right to file frivolous lawsuits against judges or make false and scurrilous charges against them. See In re Jaffree, 444 N.E.2d 143, 147 (Ill. 1982); and In re Palmisano, 70 F.3d 483, 487 (7th Cir. 1995). The Seventh Circuit ruled that the Constitution does not give attorneys the same freedom of speech as participants in political debate, and that courts can "require attorneys to speak with greater care and civility than is the norm in political campaigns." Id. According to the court, an attorney is not absolutely liable for every statement that turns out to be incorrect, but when an attorney lacks any support for spurious allegations of misconduct towards judges, the Constitution permits sanction.

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