‘Here’s to al-Qaeda’

National Review ^ | Andrew C. McCarthy

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Nearly 20 years ago, I asked the late William Kunstler about his philosophy of lawyering. A flamboyant leftist who proudly represented jihadists just as he proudly represented many other anti-American radicals, Bill succinctly replied, “Everybody’s entitled to a lawyer, but nobody’s entitled to me!”

When speaking with him outside the lines of litigation, I was always beguiled by the aging rogue’s lack of pretense. Kunstler maintained that attorneys are under no obligation to take on every client who walks in the door. Once you took a case, though, it was your duty to give it your all. And because giving his all and zealously ensuring that the client got every available advantage was the attorney’s first duty, a lawyer had to be given a lot of leeway in choosing the clients and causes to which he would dedicate himself. It was one of the few things on which we agreed.

In these chats, there was about Kunstler a refreshing absence of twaddle about the lofty nobility of his choices, a marked contrast to the drivel that flows from the pen of Conor Friedersdorf. At The Atlantic on Thursday, Mr. Friedersdorf delivered himself of what, even by his standards, was a shrill rant, provoked by my recent column on the hypocrisy of the Lawyer Left, which finds the American people’s support of traditional marriage too distasteful to defend but can’t queue up fast enough to volunteer its wares to assorted radicals, psychopaths, and deadbeats.

I used the occasion of King & Spalding’s abandonment of its Defense of Marriage Act clients — congressional representatives of the American people seeking to turn back challenges to DOMA — to highlight facts the legal profession, in its arrogance, dares you not to notice.

As an institution, the profession is the vanguard of the movement Left.