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What the Senate’s Rejection of Debo Adegbile Teaches Future Lawyers
Attention all young lawyers: do you have any ambitions of making it to the bench? Or maybe another plum political position? Is that the kind of career you want? If you answered no to those questions, you can stop reading here. You can go on with your day, and you don’t need to heed the warning I’m about to give.
But if you answered yes, there’s something you really need to consider. Watch everything you do closely, because as we learned in the Senate this week, participating in a single controversial case has the potential to invalidate your entire career.
Debo Adegbile, a well respected Civil Rights lawyer who was nominated by President Barack Obama to head the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, was rejected by the Senate yesterday. His nomination was blocked through a procedural vote that fell 52-47. The reason given for his rejection was the fact that he was involved in an appeal to get Mumia Abu-Jamal, a man who was found guilty of murdering a cop in Philadelphia, off death row. That involvement was enough to render the rest of his qualifications utterly irrelevant.
Here are the top 5 reasons why Debo Adegbile’s rejection by the Senate was dead wrong.
5. His involvement in the Abu-Jamal case was pretty minor.
Debo Adegbile worked for the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund — a widely respected institution. The NAACP routinely takes on controversial cases. This should come as a surprise to no one.
The Abu-Jamal case has been contentious for years, receiving both national and international condemnation and applause. Abu-Jamal’s supporters have alleged that the trial was marred by flawed jury selection and instruction and lack of impartiality.
Now the NAACP, not Adegbile himself, but the institution for which he worked, became involved in the appeals process in the Abu-Jamal case in 2006, roughly 25 years after Abu-Jamal’s original conviction. Adegbile didn’t become involved in the case until 2008, when he signed onto a brief. When the NAACP became more involved in 2011, eventually working to get Abu-Jamal’s death sentence overturned in favor of life in prison, Adegbile wasn’t even on the defense team. He was barely involved with this case.
4. Adegbile was doing his job.
Let’s also consider what the NAACP was arguing, what the brief that Adegbile was tangentially involved with consisted of. They were arguing that Abu-Jamal did not receive due process of law — not that he was innocent. They didn’t argue that the conviction was wrong, they argued that the sentencing was wrong. As Slate writer Dahlia Lithwick so perfectly put it, “What he did do — which fits pretty readily within the historic mandate of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund — was to help ensure that the American criminal justice system, and especially the death penalty, is administered fairly and constitutionally.” By being even slightly involved in this case, Adegbile was doing the job that he agreed to do at a respected institution with a worthy cause.
Furthermore, Adegbile was doing his job as a lawyer. Attorneys pledge to uphold the constitution, to make sure that clients get fair treatment, and have a legal obligation to do so. Lawyers, and their clients, have the right, if not the obligation, to question cases in which there is a possible loss of liberty and legal protections.
I’m not saying that any lawyer should get a free pass for cases they take, or that every lawyer would be qualified for the position for which Adegbile was nominated. But it’s pretty clear that Adegbile was doing his job, for a respected institution, with a valid legal argument, on a case which eventually was found to have been unfair to Abu-Jamal. And he’s now being punished for that.
3. Every lawyer has some controversial cases.
I am pretty sure it’s impossible to be a prominent lawyer in the United States without at some point being involved with a controversial case. In fact, prominent cases are often the catalyst for becoming a prominent lawyer. So let’s check out arguably the most prominent legal figure in the United States right now: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John G. Roberts.
When Roberts was in private practice, he helped represent a convicted killer in Florida named John Ferguson, who killed eight people. He put in 25 pro bono hours for his work on the case, and it never came up in his confirmation hearings, and rightly so.
And Roberts isn’t the only one. Controversial cases abound, and if lawyers do their due diligence, and make appropriate legal arguments, such cases shouldn’t hamstring them and prevent them from ever serving in a political position.
2. The vote was a transparent political move.
With the way that Congress has been behaving recently, this is almost a useless point, but I’m going to make it anyway. Adegbile lost 52-47. Now obviously all the Republicans voted against him — but so did eight Democrats: Harry Reid (Nev.), Chris Coons (Del.), Bob Casey (Pa.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Manchin (W.V.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and John Walsh (Mont.).
Of those eight, only three are up for reelection in 2014. But all eight of them live in relatively purple or red states. The only exception would be Coons, but it’s important to remember that his state falls within Philadelphia’s media market, where Abu-Jamal’s crime occurred. The Democrats who voted against Adegbile may have done so from their consciences, that really may be the case. But if they didn’t, and if this was a political move, they deserve ire.
And it’s looking like that might be true. A senior aide to one of the Senators who voted against Adegbile anonymously stated, “It’s a vote you didn’t have to take. It’s a 30-second ad that writes itself.”
1. The message this vote sends to lawyers.
The failed nomination of Adegbile for, as stated by the dissidents, his involvement in the Abu-Jamal case says a lot. If he had been rejected based on his qualifications, fine. That wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. But let’s be very clear about this: he was rejected because he did his job as a lawyer.
Watch this video of Iowa Senator Tom Harkin exclaiming his disgust over the decision. It’s long, but it’s worth it, because it sums up this entire issue near perfectly.
What does that mean for our young ambitious attorneys, our best and brightest, our potential nominees in 20 years? Well, this rejection sends them the message to watch their backs. To stop and think before they take every single case. It requires them to anticipate the future. And it tells them not to take chances, not to fight for the cases they’re passionate about. It tells them to stop taking the actions that make our legal system so great. That’s what it says. So future lawyers, current lawyers, potential lawyers: heed my warning. Watch what you do, or pay a price in the future.
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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.
Featured image courtesy of [Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights via Flickr]
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