The Rule of Law Depends on John Eastman

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tomklingenstein.com

 

Editor’s Note: America is in the midst of a cold civil war. On the one side are the defenders of our constitutional regime. On the other is a revolutionary enemy: the group quota regime, which has turned our own legal system into one of its primary weapons, lawfare. When someone runs afoul of the group quota regime, he can expect lawfare to be inflicted on him with all the viciousness appropriate to wartime. 

This is what happened to John Eastman, an attorney who has been ruthlessly persecuted by the enemy for the crime of providing legal advice to President Trump amid the contested 2020 election. As Mark Pulliam writes, the questions at stake here are foundational ones; the rule of law, and the rights of citizens. These are threatened in this war. Whether the group quota regime triumphs over the American regime may well hinge on whether this lawfare is allowed to stand.

 

The rule of law depends on the even-handed application of laws—thus, the blindfold on statues depicting Lady Justice, derived from the Roman figure Justitia. In our adversary system of justice, a legacy of the Anglo-Saxon common law system brought to our shores by colonists from England, the resolution of legal disputes requires the zealous representation of litigants by attorneys and an impartial—or “neutral”– decisionmaker. Legal scholars have described the adversary system as a keystone of individual liberty and due process of law. The indispensability of legal representation, even in unpopular causes, has been a pillar of American jurisprudence since 1770, on the eve of the American Revolution, when John Adams courageously undertook the defense of British soldiers accused of murdering five colonists in the so-called Boston Massacre.

As we shall see, this historical episode, which legal journalist Dan Abrams has called the “most important case in colonial American history,” provides a stark contrast to travails resulting from the representation of President Donald Trump by California attorney John Eastman, who is facing disbarment, criminal prosecution, and other forms of retribution for providing legal advice to an unpopular client in connection with the controversial 2020 presidential election. How times have changed. 

Adams, a leading patriot and a lawyer, risked his family’s livelihood and incurred the considerable opprobrium of his fellow Bostonians because he believed that everyone—even the hated Redcoats–was entitled to a fair trial. A fair trial, Adams understood, requires legal representation by an attorney. When other Boston attorneys refused to defend Captain Thomas Preston and eight of his soldiers charged in the shooting, Adams agreed to do so. Adams realized that the inflamed passions of the community, fueled by the anti-British rhetoric of Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty (led by Adams’ second cousin, Samuel Adams), could lead to a miscarriage of justice without competent legal representation for the soldiers.

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