The Justice Department has placed on administrative leave a government immigration lawyer who in court this week expressed frustration at not being able to answer key questions from a judge over a mistaken deportation case, according to two people familiar with the matter.
I am not a lawyer, but I think that presenting the defendants’ case as written in their memorandum would not be lying, although I can see how doing so would make an honest man uncomfortable. Reuveni supported the morally right side when, in effect, he argued for the plaintiffs, but in doing so he failed to fulfill a lawyer’s obligation to zealously defend his client. If he wanted to do both, he should have declined to take the case in the first place (although presumably he would have been demoted or fired for that too).
With that said, a man can do the right thing now even when he could have done so earlier and didn’t (and doing so in court was certainly more dramatic than refusing to take the case would have been). I wouldn’t mind donating money to him the way that people of a different sort donated money to Daniel Penny.
I’m not sure how to reconcile my view with the principle that even the worst criminal defendants have the right to competent legal representation. I suppose I make an exception here because the federal government is never in danger of being railroaded.
I am not a lawyer, but I think that presenting the defendants’ case as written in their memorandum would not be lying, although I can see how doing so would make an honest man uncomfortable. Reuveni supported the morally right side when, in effect, he argued for the plaintiffs, but in doing so he failed to fulfill a lawyer’s obligation to zealously defend his client. If he wanted to do both, he should have declined to take the case in the first place (although presumably he would have been demoted or fired for that too).
With that said, a man can do the right thing now even when he could have done so earlier and didn’t (and doing so in court was certainly more dramatic than refusing to take the case would have been). I wouldn’t mind donating money to him the way that people of a different sort donated money to Daniel Penny.
I’m not sure how to reconcile my view with the principle that even the worst criminal defendants have the right to competent legal representation. I suppose I make an exception here because the federal government is never in danger of being railroaded.