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Law for the People LAW FOR THE PEOPLE national lawyers guild 132 Nassau Street, Rm. 922 New York, NY 10038 Cover design: Lloyd Miller NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD COMMITTEES, PROJECTS, TASK FORCES NATIONAL OFFICE STAFF ANIMAL LAW PROJECT MASS INCARCERATION COMMITTEE POOJA GEHI [email protected] [email protected] EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR [email protected] ANTI-RACISM COMMITTEE MILITARY LAW TASK FORCE [email protected] [email protected] | NLGMLTF.ORG DANIEL MCGEE MANAGING DIRECTOR OF THE NLG FOUNdaTION ANTI-SEXISM COMMITTEE NEXT GEN COMMITTEE [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] TRACI YODER IRECTOR OF DUCATION ESEARCH COMMITTEE FOR PRISON LAW PROJECT D E & R [email protected] DEMOCRATIC COMMUNICATIONS [email protected] [email protected] TASHA MORO QUEER CAUCUS DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS DISABILITY JUSTICE COMMITTEE [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] TUPOCC LISA DRAPKIN DRUG POLICY COMMITTEE (THE UNITED PEOPLE OF COLOR CAUCUS) DIRECTOR OF MEMBERSHIP [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] NVIRONMENTAL USTICE OMMITTEE ATIONAL MMIGRATION ROJECT E J C N I P KING DOWNING [email protected] DAN KESSELBRENNER DIRECTOR OF MASS DEFENSE [email protected] [email protected] HOUSING COMMITTEE TEL (617) 227-9727, FAX (617) 227-5495 [email protected] NATIONALIMMIGRATIONPROJECT.ORG KIMMIE DAVID OFFICE MANAGER INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE NATIONAL POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] NLGINTERNATIONAL.ORG TEL (617) 227-6015, FAX (617) 227-6018 NLG-NPAP.ORG LABOR & EMPLOYMENT COMMITTEE NLG-LABOREMPLOY-COMM.ORG SUGAR LAW CENTER FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE [email protected] MASS DEFENSE COMMITTEE TEL (313) 962-6540, FAX (313) 962-4492 [email protected] SUGARLAW.ORG NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD 132 NASSAU STREET, RM. 922, NEW YORK, NY 10038 (212) 679-5100 WWW.NLG.ORG Practice Being a People’s Lawyer! ou have unlimited possibilities to better society Avoid the pitfalls that so many young lawyers often fall through your practice of law. Each of you is unique into. Most new lawyers feel that the problems involved Yin how you can apply your talents, skills, and cre- are strictly legal and, because they know the law, they ative energies to find ways to use the law to advance justice. have the answers to the problems and know what to do. If you are like most incoming law students you probably Consequently, they do not listen to the people involved. will hear that attorneys cannot mix activism with the prac- And time after time, by focusing so strongly on the legal tice of law. Your law school experience may reinforce this issues, these attorneys miss the actual problems and fail to notion. The purpose of this Disorientation Handbook is to develop the approaches really required. provoke you to challenge traditional notions of how one The test for a people’s lawyer is not always the techni- must practice law and to suggest ways to make your three cal winning or losing of the formal proceedings. The real years of study more enriching and challenging. The National test is the impact of the legal activities on the morale and Lawyers Guild strongly recommends that you begin your understanding of the people involved in the struggle. No work as a “people’s lawyer” while in law school. matter how experienced, clever, and resourceful a lawyer Your most important lessons are going to come through may be, the most important element is still the informed your interactions with the people—and causes—you rep- support and active participation of the people involved. resent. The most significant preparation you will need Without this, a legal victory has very little meaning indeed. in practice is not the careful analysis of the argument of the opposition, as necessary as that is. What is decisive —Arthur Kinoy (1920-2003), Guild attorney in preparation is knowing your own people and, out of your relationship with them, coming to understand their thinking, their analysis of the problems facing them, and their perception of the solution, of what must be done. NLG President Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan leads a Guild protest to the Department of Justice during the NLG 80th Anniversary Convention in Washington DC (Photo: Curtis McGuire) 2 National Lawyers Guild Disorientation Handbook History of the National Lawyers Guild ounded in 1937, the National the first UN-accredited human rights later admitted the charges were base- Lawyers Guild was the nation’s non-governmental organizations in less, however only after ten years of Ffirst racially integrated bar 1948, the International Association of federal litigation. This period in the association. In the 1930s, Guild law- Democratic Lawyers (IADL). Guild’s history made the defense of yers helped organize the United Auto In the late 1940s and 1950s, democratic rights and the dangers Workers, the Congress of Industrial Guild members founded the first of political profiling more than the- Organizations, and supported the New national plaintiffs personal inju- oretical questions for its members Deal in the face of determined oppo- ry bar association that became the and provided valuable experience sition. In the 1940s, Guild lawyers American Trial Lawyers Association in defending First Amendment free- fought against fascists in the Spanish (ATLA), and pioneered storefront doms that informs the work of the Civil War and WWII, and helped law offices for low-income clients organization today. prosecute Nazis at Nuremburg. Guild that became the model for the com- In the 1960s, the Guild set up lawyers fought racial discrimination munity-based offices of the Legal offices in the South and organized in cases such as Hansberry v. Lee,1 Services Corporation. During the thousands of volunteer lawyers and the case that struck down segregation- McCarthy era, Guild members rep- law students to support the civil ist Jim Crow laws in Chicago. The resented the Hollywood Ten, the rights movement, long before the Guild was one of the non-governmen- Rosenbergs, and thousands of vic- federal government or other bar tal organizations selected by the U.S. tims of the anti-communist hysteria. associations. Guild members rep- government to officially represent the Unlike all other national bar associ- resented the families of murdered American people at the founding of ations, the Guild refused to require civil rights activists who were assas- the United Nations in 1945. Members “loyalty oaths” of its members and sinated by local law enforcement/ helped draft the Universal Declaration was thus labeled “subversive” by Ku Klux Klan members. Guild- of Human Rights and founded one of the U.S. Justice Department, which initiated lawsuits brought the Justice Department directly into Mississippi and challenged the seating of the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Guild lawyers defended civil rights activists and established new federal constitutional protec- tions in Supreme Court cases. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Guild members represented Vietnam War draft resisters, antiwar activists and the Chicago 7. Guild offices in Asia represented GIs who opposed the war. Guild members argued U.S. 2 v. U.S. District Court, the Supreme Court case that established that Nixon could not ignore the Bill of Rights in the name of “national secu- rity” and led to the Watergate hear- ings and Nixon’s resignation. Guild members defended F.B.I.-targeted members of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican independence Arthur Kinoy being dragged from the hearing room of the House UnAmerican Activities movement. Committee (HUAC) in 1966. National Lawyers Guild Disorientation Handbook 3 Members helped expose illegal F.B.I and C.I.A. surveillance, infil- tration and disruption tactics (called COINTELPRO), that the U.S. Senate Church Commission hear- ings detailed in 1975-76 and which led to enactment of the Freedom of Information Act and other lim- itations on federal investigative power. The NLG supported self-de- termination for Palestine, began the ongoing fight against the blockade of Cuba and opposed apartheid in South Africa at a time when the U.S. Government called Nelson Mandela a “terrorist.” Members founded other civil and human rights institutions, such as the Center for Constitutional The Committee to Assist Southern Lawyers, c. 1963. The Committee depended heavily on Rights, the National Conference of the work of young law students to ease the immense burden of civil rights cases filed by Black Lawyers, the Meiklejohn Civil just a handful of Southern attorneys. During the first summer, at least 65 Guild attorneys Liberties Institute and the People's went south to support the increasingly bold and dangerous work of CORE, SNCC, and the College of Law. SCLC. From left: Len Holt, William Goodman, Denise Kessler, Joe Jordan, Ed Dawley and Emma Gregory. In the 1980s, the Guild pioneered the “necessity defense” and used In the 1990s, Guild members were playing active roles in encour- international law to support the mobilized opposition to the Gulf War, aging cross-border labor organizing anti-nuclear movement and to chal- defended Haitian refugees, opposed and in exposing the abuses in the lenge the use of nuclear weapons. In the U.S. blockade of Cuba and began maquiladoras on the U.S.-Mexico a case argued by Guild lawyers, the to define a new civil rights agen- Border. World Court declared that nuclear da that includes the right to health The eight years of the Bush pres- weapons violate international law. care, employment, education, and idency showed us that the struggle The Guild’s National Immigration housing. Members authored the first for democracy in the U.S. is far from Project began working on immigra- reports that detailed U.S. violations over. Bush issued unprecedented and tion issues, spurred by the need to of human rights standards regard- unwarranted buildups of military represent Central American refugees ing the death penalty, racism, police might and expansions of executive and asylum activists.
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