by Matt Barr

What do you call a lawyer getting the crap beaten out of him in China?

I don't laugh at lawyer jokes. It's not that I'm sensitive, or, you know, a lawyer, it's that picking on lawyers is stupid. The chuckleheads who earn their money convincing the hand-to-mouth they're sitting on a pile of cash for some egregious wrong somebody with a lot of insurance did to them can all go to hell, after I get my money back for the inflated bills and prices I have to pay to support their adventures. But if you're going to sneer at a profession, you should make it one whose participants don't get themselves beaten, intimidated and harrassed for standing up for people. I suggest actuaries, or orthodontists.

New York-based Human Rights in China has a report out on the Chinese government's efforts to muscle lawyers out of the business of helping people enforce their rights and dignity. While happy to simply threaten to kill lawyers, arrest them on false charges or beat them to within an inch of their lives, the government also enacts clever regulations hindering the job lawyers can do for Chinese citizens. Here's a good one:

According to [the All-China Lawyers Association (ACLA) "Guiding Opinion on Lawyers Handling Collective Cases"], lawyers taking on "collective" cases -- i.e. cases involving more than ten people -- and "major sensitive cases" are required to immediately report to and accept the supervision and guidance of judicial administrative organs. The new [March, 2006] rule also warns lawyers not to encourage their clients to participate, or participate themselves, in petitions of government offices, and not to contact foreign organizations and media. Only "politically qualified lawyers" are allowed to deal with "collective, major sensitive cases," and before accepting those cases, they need the approval of at least three law firm partners.

Procedural rules are used to stifle litigation, too. "In order to carry on their work, lawyers reportedly often need to bribe officials and judges, including paying 'file retrieval fees,' 'service fees' and fees for referrals from judges, euphemistically called 'cash cases' or 'friendship cases.'" (Footnotes and Chinese characters omitted.) You might say, too, that judges run a tight courtroom in China: "[I]n March 2006, a Tianjin judge who beat and choked a Beijing lawyer trying to file a case proclaimed, 'I am the court, the court is me. If I say the case will not be filed, the case will not be filed.'"

It wouldn't be a jackbooted, fascist regime without some people getting roughed up. The report cites the case of Zheng Enchong, who in 2003 "was sentenced to three years in prison and deprivation of his political rights for one year by the Shanghai Second Intermediate People's Court on charges of 'illegally providing state secrets to entities outside of China.'" Zheng corrresponded with human rights groups, including Human Rights in China, while assisting residents and workers displaced by redevelopment projects.

Chen Guangcheng, profiled as one of Time's 100 People Who Shape Our World, "was confined to his home and beaten in August 2005 after organizing a class-action lawsuit against the local government over the practice of sterilization and forced late-term abortions," according to the report. He was tried on August 19 in the absence of counsel, partly because his lead lawyer, Li Jinsong, dropped his case in June after being attacked and having his car overturned while he was still inside, and partly because police detained other lawyers on his team on charges of theft the night before the trial. Chen Guangcheng was sentenced August 24 to more than four years in prison.

Judge Alex Kozinski memorably (to me) called the Second Amendment a "doomsday provision," something a free and prosperous people may not need till they do, when armed troops stand against unarmed citizens. The same may be true of a vigorous and vital bar. We can sneer at lawyers because we're fortunate enough not to live somewhere where they're beaten, harrassed and intimidated for standing up for us.

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