National Lawyers Guild

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The National Lawyers Guild is a progressive Bar Association in the United States "dedicated to the need for basic and progressive change in the structure of our political and economic system."[1] Its members include lawyers, law students, paralegals, legal secretaries, "jailhouse lawyers", and other legal workers. It was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association and has several local chapters across the country as well as a number of Committees and Projects. The NLG web site lists the following aims:

  • to eliminate racism;
  • to safeguard and strengthen the rights of workers, women, farmers and minority groups, upon whom the welfare of the entire nation depends;
  • to maintain and protect our civil rights and liberties in the face of persistent attacks upon them;
  • to use the law as an instrument for the protection of the people, rather than for their repression.

Since its inception, the NLG has been noted for its support of liberal and left-wing causes. Currently, the NLG opposes the PATRIOT Act, corporate globalization, the World Trade Organization, and has called for the adoption of "the Plan of Action from the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance." The NLG also helps to train and provide legal observers for political demonstrations. On the international front, the NLG has supported Palestinian rights and a number of other causes.

Marjorie Cohn, a law professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is President of the NLG as of October 2006.

Contents

[edit] History

At its founding in 1937, the National Lawyers Guild was the nation's first racially integrated bar association. Among the NLG's first causes was its support of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, which was opposed by the American Bar Association. NLG assisted the emerging labor movement, and opposed the racial segregation policies in the American Bar Association and in society in general.[2]

During the McCarthy era, it was alleged to be a Communist front organization. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly tried to get successive Attorneys General to declare the NLG a "subversive organization," but without success.[3]

The NLG was also involved in the American Civil Rights Movement from an early date, organizing a 1947 conference on the subject of lynching. This continued into the 1960s with the creation of the Guild's Committee for Legal Assistance. This era also saw NLG involvement in anti-war (including draft resistance) and anti-poverty efforts.

[edit] Membership

Full membership in the NLG is open to and consists of lawyers, law students, and legal workers (including legal secretaries, legal investigators, paralegals, and jailhouse lawyers). Prior to the 1960s, membership was only open to lawyers. Members of the Guild now include labor organizers, tribal sovereignty activists, civil liberties advocates, civil rights advocates, environmentalists, and many other progressive cause advocates involved in some aspect of legal work.

According to journalist Chip Berlet, a paralegal member of the NLG:

In the 1950s the National Lawyers Guild refused to purge its members who were members of the Communist Party. Today there are Guild members who are cadres in a variety of communist groups along with a majority of unaffiliated members. As a paralegal investigator, I joined the Guild in the 1970s. I found an example of an organization that tried hard to incorporate the participation of cadres within a democratic structure.

Easy? You must be kidding! The cacophony at some meetings makes Star Wars seem like a minimalist film. I have chaired committee meetings with debates featuring cadres from Leninist, Trotskyist, Stalinist, and Maoist groups, along with Marxists, anarchists, libertarians, and progressive independents-interacting with a preponderance of reluctant Democrats-all intertwined with multiple alternate identities as lawyers, legal workers, labor organizers, tribal sovereignty activists, civil liberties and civil rights advocates, environmentalists, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and people of color.[4]

[edit] Funding

The NLG is a dues-paying mebership organization, and various projects have also received funding from the Open Society Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and other funders.

[edit] Criticism

Since its founding, the NLG has been the focus of controversy and criticism, primarily from more conservative elements but also from moderates and liberals as well. Sidney Hook described the individuals who founded the NLG as being as “not being capable of taking any stand that conflicts with the CPUSA”. Hook illustrated this point with the NLG’s repeated refusal to defend the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members prosecuted under the Smith Act in 1941 but being one of the first legal defense teams involved in the defense of CPUSA membership prosecuted under the Smith Act in 1947. [5] Central to these critics' arguments is the claim that the organization is a supporter of communism, or, more recently, terrorism.[6] [7] These claims have been repeatedly denied by the organization's leadership as “red-baiting”.

For example, a controversy arose when the NLG supported member attorney Lynne Stewart when she was charged with transmitting terrorist communications from prison by Omar Abdel-Rahman, her former client and mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. The NLG then condemned Stewart's conviction.[8] Although NLG Attorney Elaine Cassel claims that "Stewart never provided any financial support, weaponry -- or any other concrete aid -- for any act of terrorism. No act of terrorism is alleged to have resulted from her actions"[9] Stewart was ultimately convicted of the charges and sentenced to 28 months in federal prison. [10]

[edit] Further reading

(1988) The National Lawyers Guild: From Roosevelt Through Reagan. Temple University Press. ISBN 0877224889.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ National Lawyers Guild web site.
  2. ^ Erlinder, Peter. National Lawyers Guild; History. National Lawyers Guild.
  3. ^ Schrecker, Ellen (1998). Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Little, Brown, pg. 224. ISBN 0-316-77470-7.
  4. ^ Berlet, Chip. Abstaining from Bad Sects: Understanding Sects, Cadres, and Mass Movement Organizations. Resist, Inc..
  5. ^ Shapiro, Edward (May, 1995). Letters of Sidney Hook: Democracy, Communism, and the Cold War. M.E. Sharpe.
  6. ^ Rigsby, Jesse (2003). NLG: The Legal Fifth Column. Articles. FrontPageMagazine.com. Retrieved on 2006-09-15. - "The Guild, not content to merely express "solidarity" with terrorists abroad, works to make the U.S. a safer place—for terrorists. The Guild uniformly opposes anti-terrorism measures and laws, yet supports those who have engaged in terrorist or anti-law enforcement acts..."
  7. ^ Macomber, Shawn (2005). Real Revelations. National Review Online. National Review Online. Retrieved on 2006-09-15. - "While the NLG's beginnings as a civil-rights-focused alternative to then-segregated American Bar Association in 1937 were quite noble, the organization's affinity for oppressors and terrorists since has been more than a little troubling."
  8. ^ National Lawyers Guild Condemns Verdict In Lynne Stewart Trial. National Lawyers Guild (2005). Retrieved on 2006-09-15.
  9. ^ Cassel, Elaine (2005). The Lynne Stewart Guilty Verdict: Stretching the Definition of "Terrorism" To Its Limits. FindLaw. Retrieved on 2006-09-15.
  10. ^ SUPERSEDING INDICTMENT ADDS NEW CHARGES AGAINST AHMED ABDEL SATTAR, LYNNE STEWART, AND MOHAMMED YOUSRY. United States Department of Justice (2003). Retrieved on 2003-11-19.

[edit] External links

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