{"id":4004,"date":"2005-08-09T00:32:05","date_gmt":"2005-08-09T04:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2005\/08\/09\/bar-associations-as-special-i"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:57:30","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:57:30","slug":"bar-associations-as-special-interest-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2005\/08\/09\/bar-associations-as-special-interest-groups\/","title":{"rendered":"bar associations as special interest groups"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

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At f\/k\/a<\/EM>, we often complain that bar associations primarily act on behalf of their <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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favorite special interest: the financial needs of their members (see, e.g<\/EM>., <\/FONT>bar & guild<\/FONT><\/A>, <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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misplaced paternalism<\/FONT><\/A>, and access to justice<\/FONT><\/A><\/FONT>).  But, <\/FONT>Professor Bainbridge raises<\/FONT><\/A> <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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another <\/FONT>important <\/FONT>issue today: bar associations acting like any other special interest <\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV>
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group <\/FONT><\/FONT>when it <\/FONT>comes to rating judicial candidates.   Although I usually favor intelligently-<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV>
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liberal <\/FONT>judges, I agree with Prof. B. that the ABA’s rating process appears titled against <\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV>
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conservative judges.   This liberal bias makes its recommendations less effective, <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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less valuable, and easy to brush aside, doing a disservice to the public, legislators <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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and other decision-makers.  (see WSJ.com, “Yes, the <\/FONT>ABA’s Rankings are Biased<\/FONT><\/A>,” <\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV>
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by Jim Lindgren, Aug. 6, 2005) <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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<\/FONT> <\/DIV>
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The problem of unacknowledged ideological biases (and the capture of associations \"fr<\/FONT><\/DIV>
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or their sections and committees by special interests) goes beyond judicial nominations, <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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and is not limited to left-oriented groups.  I believe that many bar association committees <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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are chaired and\/or populated by activitists and extremists, with political and ideological axes <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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to grind, and <\/FONT>produce recommendations and reports that are skewed toward their special <\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV>
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interests.   <\/FONT><\/FONT>These proposals are not looked at in depth by an association’s full membership <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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and often <\/FONT>become the group’s “official” position.  <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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<\/FONT> <\/DIV>
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For example, as I’ve noted in posts such as <\/FONT>this one<\/FONT><\/A> on the ABA Standards for Children’s <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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Lawyers in Custody Cases, both the ABA and the NYSBA have adopted guidelines relating <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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to lawyer representation of children that swept aside long-established judicial precedents and <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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ethical norms, in order to promote a radical children’s rights agenda.  If readers have other <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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examples from their specialty areas, I hope they’ll join the discussion.  <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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<\/FONT> <\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At f\/k\/a, we often complain that bar associations primarily act on behalf of their favorite special interest: the financial needs of their members (see, e.g., bar & guild, misplaced paternalism, and access to justice).  But, Professor Bainbridge raises another important issue today: bar associations acting like any other special interest group when it comes to rating judicial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-12A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13091,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions\/13091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}