Canadian Lawyer

w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 9 17 lawyer, Scott Spencer, left his law firm. It was reported that his partners wanted him gone because of negative publicity stemming from the controversial pro- ceedings. Michael Bromwich, a lawyer for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford in the Brett Kavanaugh September 2018 U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, was forced to resign from his law firm when his part- ners objected to his taking on Ford as a cli- ent. Prominent U.S. litigator David Boies is one of the lawyers representing Harvey Weinstein. He has been doing so aggres- sively and has been called a thug. He told The New York Times, "You don't know all the facts when you take on a client, but once you do, you have a duty of loyalty. You can't represent them halfway." In the words of the Times, "For the first time in his career, the most vaunted advocate in the United States has been a defendant in the court of public opinion." These issues don't only arise in dra- matic criminal or sexual harassment cases. Corporations have been known to behave badly. Pharmaceutical giants may fix prices. Mining companies may exploit cheap labour or violate human rights in South America or Africa. Sometimes companies are called to legal account at home (look at the Ontario case of Choc v. HudBay Minerals). They need — and, of course, get — skilled and aggressive legal representation. But the lawyers who rep- resent these corporations can be severely criticized, increasingly so as society is polarized between the advantaged few and the disadvantaged many. Then there are lawyers who go to bat, not for a person, but for a prin- ciple. Perhaps the most famous modern example is the 1977 representation of the National Socialist Party of America, a neo-Nazi group, by the American Civil Liberties Union. The NSP wanted to march through Skokie, Illinois, a Jewish suburb of Chicago, dressed in Nazi uniforms. The local government issued an injunction prohibiting the marchers from wearing Nazi uniforms or displaying swastikas. The ACLU suc- cessfully appealed the injunction, argu- ing that it violated freedom of speech and assembly rights. The ACLU lawyer who represented the NSP was Jewish. Subsequently, 30,000 ACLU members, about 25 per cent of its membership, resigned. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has on occasion played a similar role, particularly when it was led by its long-time legal counsel Alan Borovoy, who died in 2015. In the 1980s, for example, the CCLA defended the right of Ernst Zündel and James Keegstra to deny that the Holocaust took place. Borovoy, who was Jewish, argued that "freedom of speech is often most necessary when it creates some level of tension or unrest." It takes courage to do this, to stand up for an unpopular or hated person, or fight for a principle in difficult circum- stances, but who ever said it was easy to be a righteous lawyer? A collection of these columns — How to Be Good: The Struggle Between Law and Eth- ics — was published in 2017. Master the law. Canada's leading law school offers a graduate degree in four unique streams: Business Law Canadian Law in a Global Context Innovation, Law and Technology Law of Leadership Apply today. Visit gpllm.law.utoronto.ca Questions? gpllm@utoronto.ca ntitled-6 1 2018-05-25 11:45 AM

• Cover