When Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe was found to have plagiarized parts of one of his books, he issued a self-aggrandizing apology (It happened because of a “well-meaning effort to write a book accessible to a lay audience.”) and suffered no consequences at Harvard. Indeed his colleagues rushed to his defense.
After Tribe got trapped the other day in a supermarket elevator for a few minutes, he announced that “They need to be publicly accountable.” No doubt he will sue.
Tribe has never been held accountable for stealing someone else’s work. He figured he could get away with it. His colleagues got angry at the journalists who discovered it.
Now, because he was inconvenienced for a few minutes, he’s pontificating about public accountability.
July 24th, 2010 at 2:35PM
I wonder how much the proliferation of lawyers has to do with the accelerating loss of civility in our society. I bet it’s a lot.
July 24th, 2010 at 3:23PM
Yes, as you will find in any group of people, there are lawyers who are rude, aggressive, obnoxious, and a blight upon the profession and our society. Yet there are also thousands of attorneys who volunteer their services to assist indigent persons, battered women, non-profit organizations, and social service agencies. See, for example, the column entitled “Of greatest value is that which we give away” at http://mnbenchbar/2009/10/of_greatest-value_is_that_which_we_give_away/
Harper Lee’s father was the real life inspiration for Atticus Finch, and there are many attorneys who carry on the pro bono publico tradition of the legal profession every day.
July 24th, 2010 at 3:35PM
Michael…I know many lawyers who are fine people. But the very nature of the profession tends to encourage a certain adversarial and verbally-aggressive mindset…some individuals can isolate this from the other aspects of their lives, but many can not or do not. As the number of lawyers has grown, this is bound to have an impact on society. This has little to do with pro bono work or lack of same.
Many people, if trapped in an elevator, would have wanted to ensure that the situation was brought to the attention of building management, the appropriate regulatory authorities, and perhaps the elevator manufacturer, and was taken seriously. But I don’t think most people would pontificate about holding them “publicly accountable”…and I think lawyers are more likely to engage in this particular type of verbal hostility than are members of the general population.
July 26th, 2010 at 9:24AM
This isn’t about lawyers. It’s about elite academics and their backslappy ties to power. Tribe got his free pass on Elena Kagan’s watch. So did Dershowitz and Ogletree. According to this, Kagan herself used to ghostwrite for Tribe. We don’t hold such people accountable. We anoint them. Or, rather, they anoint each other while we sit back and watch.