‘The popularity of the lawsuits … appear[s] to be perceived as a boon for various firms’ reputations…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) One of the primary plans of attack for Democrats in the Trump era has been legislation by lawsuit.
No matter the cause, from immigration to school lunches and everything in between, lawyers have clogged the legal system with spurious suits and injunctions that will delay the president’s agenda and pose unprecedented checks on executive authority.
According to The National Law Journal, bias within the ranks of attorneys is helping the left-wing politicians run interference.
Along with Douglas Letter, the general counsel for the Democrat-led House of Representatives, a legion of activist lawyers is coordinating with the Left to undermine Trump. Fortunately, they aren’t charging taxpayers to do it, since many work for free.
By contrast Republicans had to pay top dollar to wage legal defenses against the Obama administration, with some attorneys charging upward of $500 an hour.
President Barack Obama’s disregard for the rule of law may have resulted in a record number of policies deemed unconstitutional under what most agree to have been an ideologically balanced Supreme Court.
Even so, the GOP’s own counsel during the Obama era, Kerry Kircher, admitted that high-powered D.C. lawyers were more “aroused” by aiding the Left’s agenda and less interested in fighting it.
“It wasn’t like I could have gotten top-notch representation on a pro bono basis to do that,” he told the NLJ‘s Law.com.
While the precise reasoning for the leftward lean of attorneys is not easy to nail down, the American Bar Association has historically given to Democrats in political races much more than to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
On one hand, the very basis of the Left’s philosophy—an increase in regulatory and oversight practices—favors the legal industry, which needs more laws to make more money. Thus, throwing charity work to radical lawmakers may be something of a loss-leader.
Cronyism within the industry may also play a role, as is the case in academia and other fields where powerful influencers rely on virtue-signaling to steer the success of their anointed proteges and weed out ideological diversity.
In that sense, the elitist lawyers make up in social capital among their like-minded peers what they forgo in actual revenue.
“[T]he popularity of the lawsuits—and in some cases the novelty of the lawsuits—also appear to be perceived as a boon for various firms’ reputations,” noted the legal blog Law & Crime.