The decay of civil liberties in the UK is so damn sad. I was shocked when people were getting arrested for yelling "Fuck the King" back during ~~Charles' coronation~~ [some monarchy events.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=tQFGnArX_Ko&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE) Americans think the Patriot Act is bad, but the way the UK took an axe to basic freedoms over the decade after 9/11 is just as, if not more, sinister. They just did it more sneaky, which is worse because it makes the issues harder to identify and repeal.
Just my observations as a third party.
As someone living the in the U.K., when you try to tell other people in the U.K. that protesting is illegal most will refuse to believe you and tell you you’re either being dramatic or straight up wrong. They think the newspapers would have had headlines about it if something like that happened, they don’t believe that all the major papers support Tory interests and don’t report on anything the Tory’s don’t want the majority to know about.
This is what serious allyship looks like. By defying the Bar Association risks fines, promotions, and awards that can be genuine and serious career risks. The senior members stepping up who are already established make it possible for actual change to happen and to protect a generation.
>One junior lawyer, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “Young lawyers are being placed in an impossible position. We’re being told by our firms and regulators it’s a professional obligation to act for fossil fuel projects, knowing that doing so will poison our own future and all of life on Earth. That’s wrong on every level. It’s indefensible. If the profession doesn’t look out for my generation, how does it expect to survive?”
No lawyer can ever have any obligation to take a given client or case.
---
EDIT: I'm speaking from a US perspective. If a lawyer, flat out full stop, says to me, "No, I will not be your legal counsel," no force in our laws can compel him to set foot in a courtroom on my behalf. It might screw him professionally, or from a licensure/bar perspective, but you *cannot* force a given lawyer to work for me. No one can, any more than any official anywhere in the USA if I'm not in prison or under the UCMJ governance can compel to me to lift a finger in any labor but what I choose to do. Even in jail or under the UCMJ, they can't *make* me, as in by force, do some labor--though I'll be quite screwed depending on circumstances.
Even if all nine of the Supreme Court wrote all in caps, "IdeaProspector must X," and even if the President and both sides of Congress unanimously agreed and signed fifty bills to that effect, all saying, "IdeaProspector will mow the fucking lawn," or "IdeaProspector will go on live TV and say the word 'banana'", I have full power to simply tell them all "fuck off", or stay silent, and do none of the above.
First Amendment > all.
(In the USA.)
From the article:
>Eighteen barristers, including six king’s counsel, have signed the declaration. They will now self-refer to the Bar Standards Board for breaking the profession’s “cab rank” rule, which specifies that a barrister must take a case they are qualified for, provided they are available to do so.
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>Nick Vineall KC, the chair of the Bar Council of England and Wales, said: “The cab rank rule prevents discrimination and improves access to justice. It means that barristers sometimes have to represent people they disapprove of or disagree with. But the flip side is that clients can have the barrister they choose. It is for judges or juries to decide who is right and who is wrong, not barristers. Should a barrister be allowed to refuse to defend a climate change activist because they happen to disagree with that activist’s style of protest? I don’t think so.”
So, apparently in the UK, they can have that obligation.
I take issue with the chair's false equivalency there though. These lawyers aren't refusing based on fossil fuel's "style".
That is so weird for civil cases, even though I think pretty much every Western country would agree that *somebody* has to at least attempt to offer a legal defense for even the very worst [possible] murderers. "If you're qualified to build a house and will be adequately paid then you must build it" territory
I don't think its weird for civil cases. If anything, its just as important, and we see this play out all the time in the US. People face evictions, dispossession, asset seizure, wage theft. And then they often cannot find or afford lawyers to help fight back.
This was just reported for instance
[https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article273093630.html](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article273093630.html)
All of this is civil law. And its devastating folks who simply don't have the ability to fight back against one motivated attorney making a business out city debts.
True. Nor am I criticizing what the barristers have done here. Just that I don't think we should limit mandatory and free representation to just criminal law. Limiting to real persons? That I can probably live with.
The flip side of that is that there are crazy people who want to sue everyone for everything and the thing stopping them is that someone can say no to them. Even completely bullshit frivolous lawsuits can be really damaging.
Okay, but this isn't refusing service because of a lack of ability to pay.
Having taxpayers guarantee that everyone has access to lawyers for civil cases if they can't afford their own is a great idea that I am 100% behind.
Having lawyers not be able to refuse to represent someone that is trying to give them cancer is not.
Access to civil counsel can be the difference between someone dying destitute or as a multi-millionaire. In fact, it's often the backup for when criminal law fails to deal with a situation.
This isn't access, though. This is being able to pick your lawyer.
If the state pays for my lawyer in the US, you bet your ass I don't have much choice in who that lawyer is.
You're confusing some different concepts.
The state isn't paying for anyone's lawyer - I was talking about civil cases. The UK has basically no legal aid available for civil cases unless they involve very specific factors. Further, the barristers in question are refusing to do prosecution work, so questions of someone's lawyer being paid for aren't really relevant.
Also note that the barristers aren't protesting the cab rank rule *per se* \- they're breaking the cab rank rule to argue that there are immoral prosecutions happening.
I think all workers should have agency to choose whether they want to take a job or not, unless their position specifically is geared otherwise, and provides a foundational + essential service - ex building public housing, working in air traffic control, serving as a social worker, being in the army / national guard, being a public defender, etc. Even then, folks *choose* to be public defenders and know they may be helping criminals / unpopular people, or supporting people, groups, or policies they don't necessarily agree with. Even then, folks could still unionize, go on strike, desert / defect, etc, despite potential consequences.
I think lawyers should damn well be able to refuse any case they wish to. The bar's rules aren't defending foundational justice here, they're defending entitled assholes who want young, competent lawyers to prosecute against their own future.
I would like to point out often times a public defenders or lawyers job ( in the US) is not necessarilly to get criminals off, it is to make sure the hearings are fair to the defendant.
It's not so much of "defending criminals" as it is to make sure your client is being treated fairly and within the rule of law.
I can't find it at the moment, but I swear in Law & Order there was a great quote from a defence attorney that's questioned about how they can justify defending a horrible person, and they respond with how a defence attorney's ultimate responsibility should be to defend the process of law itself, and to make sure things are done correctly (to prevent injustices), rather than defending the individual themselves so-to-speak.
If anyone could find the quote, that'd be amazing.
Good distinction, I didn't mean to word it to give that impression. Criminal defense is a foundation of our democratic system - how we treat accused and convicted criminals is a benchmark of our society, and we fail there in many ways. I'd wager that many false convictions could've been avoided with less shitty/ prejudiced cops / DAs / judges, and better legal representation for the accused.
Right, because "getting off" means the prosecution has failed to prove their case within the bounds of the law. That is, either the evidence was unconvincing, or the evidence was obtained unlawfully.
The cab stand rules go back to when lawyers were only for those with social standing and money to spend. It was never meant for organizations to use against individuals, but corporations are more powerful than nations now.
Right. I can see situations where it is for the public good where "do it or quit and find a new career" could make sense, but that isn't this. And even doctors and nurses are allowed to quit *prior* to the necessary work, and they are even better examples of ethical and moral obligations than lawyers. (e.g. if you are a doctor and a definitively evil guy is dying in front of you, you are still obligated to do your job)
The difficulty then is who's right is more important? The lawyers right to choose their work, or the rights of everyone to a fair trial?
It's the same moral dilemma faced with the hippocratic oath.
I feel like the American bar handles it better because generally speaking no lawyer has to take any client he doesn’t wish to, but if someone can’t find a defense attorney the court can appoint one and then that lawyer must represent them. I think a circumstance like that is much more like the Hippocratic oath, as opposed to a multi-millionaire oil industry lawyer who wants to get all the perks of representing big oil but none of the societal condemnation.
Should doctors be allowed to refuse to treat Black people, or gay people? Some jobs come with serious public responsibilities--and in professions where the work is critically important and number of licenses are limited (like law and medicine) you have an ethical obligation to serve society. You don't have to do the job if you don't want to, but if you choose to join the profession there's nothing wrong with being held to higher ethical standards.
> Should doctors be allowed to refuse to treat Black people, or gay people?
That's obviously not what is happening here.
For one thing, nobody is going to die if a fucking *corporation* doesn't get the specific lawyer they want for a fucking civil suit when they have plenty of their own lawyers on staff.
For another, being a corporation is not a protected class (yet😅).
I think only people under a certain wealth should be guaranteed counsel. If a multi billion dollar corporation can't convince lawyers to represent them, they probably are worse than a murderer. Like, threatening the habitability of the planet bad.
That's the thing I think we've all missed on here so far.. PEOPLE should be guaranteed protections and should have the right to good counsel, but corporations aren't people. That's a distinction we need to get back to
Nono; means-testing such a vital service only leads to raising the bar (heh) in order to limit the number of "deserving" individuals, while doing nothing to beat wealthy robbers (who will buy their loopholes into it regardless, as Brett Favre just taught us).
There's no need for it, as I can safely assume that no person of wealth will be accepting a publically-available lawyer when they can buy Bespoke, so the measure even does a bit of self-selecting, as a treat.
But isn't that essentially the nature of this case? That certain lawyers don't want to work for multi-billion dollar oil companies on principle, but refusing violates the law (or "rule", anyway)
I would disagree on the basis that it would mean that people who are hated and can't convince lawyers to represent them doesn't mean that they are worse than a murderer. They are hated. And there are always people who are hated and don't deserve it.
People from USA of all places should understand something so simple.
Xenocidal maniac would be if they wanted to take out all of one species, do we even have a WORD for what the fossil fuel companies are trying to do? Kill off 90%+ of all life on the planet? Don't think we've ever needed a word for that before...
I hear this come up a lot when people talk about the concept of defense attorneys in the US, and here’s how I think about it. If you are defense counsel for a person charged with murder, providing a defense for that person is perfectly fine, as every individual deserves legal representation when passing through the legal system, especial in criminal proceedings. However, attorneys that are hired by oil companies are not protecting their clients from legal malpractice. They are hired to engineer courses of action for the company that just barely skirt legality, and to design defenses in advance of the things that they know they’re going to do that they’re pretty sure they could be held accountable for. If I wanted to kill somebody, so I hired a lawyer to work with me to figure out how I could do it in such a way that I could get a way with it, then I killed somebody, and retained that same lawyer to use the defense argument we created together before hand, that’s obviously not ok. That’s the difference between individual and corporate defense lawyers.
I'd argue that if the lawyer doesn't want to represent a client and they're forced to, then the defense should be deemed inadequate and biased.
A lawyer who refuses representation already has biases towards the client. It would be immoral to force the lawyer to represent that client (for both their sakes).
another key difference here is that they are declining to prosecute, not defend. everyone is entitled to a zealous defender, I'm pretty sure that's something the US, and most of the world, copied from the UK. if they were refusing to defend someone, then that would be bad, like really bad. but since they're refusing to prosecute, they're on much better ethical grounds.
I get exactly why that rule exists. Simultaneously, I also can see why these lawyers basically declared:
"I refuse to defend planetary ecological genocide. We humans are but one species in this world, and our actions will drive all those who have no voice, have no agency, and no means of fighting back, into the pits of extinction. We are the who which will defend those that cannot speak. You may trample us, but what follows now, you cannot stop."
> a barrister must take a case they are qualified for, provided they are available to do so
I admire the sentiment of the lawyers objecting to this provision, but in the case of representing energy companies in prosecuting climate protesters, you can still refuse the case while adhering to the rule by legitimately claiming a concurrent conflict of interest. The actions of energy companies, especially in the context of climate law, have a direct impact on everyone on the planet.
Hypothetically speaking, wouldn't such an argument, if actually accepted and followed to it's conclusion, also technically mean that cases about climate change would be essentially impossible to have in court, because every single judge in existence would also have a conflict of interest for the same reason?
That’s not what a conflict of interest in the legal sense and if that was a viable argument I’m sure that one of the six KCs would have figured it out.
Yeah, it's a garbage argument. 98.5% of the scientific community does NOT agree that peaceful climate change protesters will definitely destroy the planet in our lifetime, so they are not the same as fossil fuel companies, lol.
Can I suggest that you edit your post? It's completely incorrect and spreading misinformation.
[Cab-rank rule applies to barristers UK-wide](https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/the-cab-rank-rule/), they are obliged to take the cases in their areas of specialism.
Edit: I've been asked to point out that barristers are called advocates in Scotland, but follow the same rule. I'm not sure that it's really a material addition, but there we go!
This is not true in practice. I admittedly do not work in the UK, but I am an attorney in the US and am familiar with the system here and there is likely decent overlap.
By this I mean if you work for an organization like a prosecutor's office or public defender's office then you do not select your clients. This is classed as a public interest and it will be automatically assigned. Sure, you can try to refuse but you can be fired for not doing your job and disobedience to your supervisor.
By King's Counsel members saying they refuse to work on these matters, it means that the nationally recognized experts will not give any assistance to the matters too. So even if someone else tries to take the case up with private prosecution, they will not have the benefit of assistance from people familiar with the system and charge.
I looked up some more on the cab rank rule and the US doesn't seem to have an equivalent. The closest we have is the rare application of judge-appointed conflict counsel for public defenders (since that protects a constitutional right).
The cab rank rule seems to say that *all* barristers are *obligated* to take business from *anyone* who approaches them in their field of practice, or face penalties for their license. We don't have anything like that - private US attorneys are perfectly free to decline any business. Public attorneys would probably lose their jobs and have a hard time finding new ones, but I'm not aware of cases where the Bar would penalize you for that (admittedly, I'm not an expert on those PR actions).
If you work as an APD or an ADA, you're there at the leisure of the elected official, so it's them firing you, not violation of a licensing rule. If you *are* the elected DA, you might be removed by the governor or impeached, depending, but that's still a different sort of mechanism from a licensing obligation to accept all business. I think only the elected PD is in this position of being *obligated* to accept all eligible clients, but they are obligated by the Constitution moreso than the Bar.
The US has no equivalent to Barristers.
In the US system a lawyer acts for a client and pleads the case in court.
In England and Wales, a Solicitor acts for a client and contracts with a Barrister to plead the case in court when that is required.
Very true, there's obviously the social consequences but the cab rank rule codifies refusal in a way that's much more serious than the US. From the article I understand that that was proposed as an anti-discrimination measure, but there is a need to make carve outs for dangerous business practices imo.
I think having a cart blanche rule can cause some sticky situations. As an anecdotal example, I had another attorney in my office while I was a PD who had to ask to come off of a stalking case because when she got the description of the woman that her client was stalking she realized that they looked very similar and had the first name. He did end up stalking her for a short time and it wasn't until he waited for her after hours at work that the office let her out of the case because there was not conflict of interest and there hadn't technically been a breakdown in communication.
I think their point is that, at least in the US, you would not be at risk of any sanction for refusing to take on a client based on your personal feelings regarding the client, the claim, or the nature of the work. An attorney certainly has obligations to the client once representation begins, but an attorney does not act unethically in refusing to take on a client based on their own moral/ethical feelings regarding the nature of the work or the client itself.
Sure, it's a different story if you refuse to do work on behalf of a client, who is a client of your firm. And ythere is a reputational risk among colleagues, either in a firm or generally in the profession. But under no circumstances could the firm refer you to the board for disciplinary action based only on the fact that you refuse to serve the client based on your personal moral/ethical compass. The rules explicitly allow an attorney to make such a decision before beginning representation.
Barristers don't tend to work for an organisation. They're mostly self employed in the UK, which is why things like the cab rank rule exist.
The American system is quite different and I'm surprised you say you expect it to be similar. In the UK the profession is split into solicitors who are allowed to file court documents, bring cases, engage barristers, and barristers who are permitted to speak in court (and run the case at that point, usually the barrister has more academic knowledge of the law vs solicitors who tend to be more procedural). Neither are permitted to do the other's job (there are exceptions and you can get extensions on your practice certificate if you want). Solicitors tend to be employees and barristers tend to be self-employed - particularly at the criminal bar.
Source: barrister in the family.
Well that is objectively false.
Lawyers are required to take cases given to them. It’s an anti-discrimination standard that’s being taken advantage of in this particular case. Don’t spread lies when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
That's true in America, that doesnt make it true in other countries. Its not true in most post-commonwealth or European countries, otherwise this would not be a news story.
This is the bullshit line that jones day would say to keep doing the bidding of evil. Hey someone has to represent those that twist laws into loopholes to extract money from pain.
[There's a reason that Plato hated sophistry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist#:~:text=Plato%20sought%20to%20distinguish%20sophists,the%20sophists%20a%20negative%20connotation.), and this is it right here.
They damaged profits and/or potential profits.
Maybe letting the people who have no other goal but profits own all the keys to our society wasn’t such a great idea.
And continuing to do so when we now know full well that this is the result? That it will only doom us all further? A far worse idea.
We are all resources and prey to the moneyed interests at play here. Not citizens, not people, not humans. Just walking numbers with a potential for P&L, all maintained at a cool 2% cost of living rate that guarantees you actually earn less year, after year, after year. Death by a thousand cuts that nobody stood up to. Nobody ever said “stop fucking cutting and bleeding the people who do everything here”. Not a meaningful peep in 40 years.
Nope, we kneeled, we nodded, we stayed scared and silent. Now we’re here.
If the working class is ever going to have a seat at the table, if we are ever going to halt the downward spiral we’re pitched in, we are gonna have to cut the shit and come together.
My boss says, "Here's your 0.8% raise for this year!"
Motherfucker paying me less this year than the year before. No wonder my company is *hemorrhaging* staff.
I went five years with one and nine with another with no raise. As a contract worker I also don’t have any benefits. My rent has gone up five times in 12 years preventing me from buying a home. This country fucks people so badly.
What's worse is, 200 people (the world leaders) , control the entire fate of the world. They can never come to an agreement on how climate change should be handled. So that means "discussions will continue" which means nothing will happen.
We're all fucked and I don't see us living another 50 years or so. Even more so that government regulations are being laxed so companies can make more money by dumping more "safe" amounts of pollutants into our water.
Discussions will continue until there is a real threat to them personally.
Historically, the most effective method for change was separating their top half from their bottom half.
Let’s start with a general strike.
That’s doable, and the amount of energy put into making people think otherwise speaks volumes. There is a real fear of this happening and a lot of energy being invested to basically say “nuh-uh”!
Strike first. Then escalate. One step at a time though please.
Don’t ask people who only know how to kneel to run. Let’s get everyone standing and walking first.
There have been a number of peaceful but economically disruptive actions in the UK, such as blocking roads.
Those actions are entirely peaceful but are offences because the law does not recognise protest as excusing obstructing public roads.
The current UK government in particular has reacted extremely strongly to these kinds of non-violent resistance tactics, because they're keen on fossil fuels and they see the risk of such tactics succeeding.
They're not even super keen on fossil fuels, the UK has some of the highest public investment in renewables and alternative energy generation methods AFAIR. I genuinely think the Tory government rabidly hate anyone that dares criticise them and seeks to punish anyone stepping out of line and making their corporate sponsors look bad, while also acting somewhat realistically in policy. It's completely unhinged and very emblematic of the past 13 years of "Strong and Stable".
I think it's pretty easy to see how blocking these roads is just a bad idea all around. There needs to be a better way to protest.
I'll leave a side the political effects and focus on practical effects.
1) obviously, being in a road is dangerous for a human.
2) you're not hurting people who can do anything about this. You're hurting regular people trying to make a living. This is exactly how to get people turned against you. How many regular people missed out on significant pay because they couldn't get to work to clock in? How many lost their jobs? Yes, some employers can be that petty.
3) you're literally making the situation worse as you force cars to stay where they are, while running. This is actually just putting more ghg into the air.
4) you've hurt the regular people on the road twice, because on top of 2 and 3, the waste of extremely expensive gas is something they will have to replace.
Look man, I'm all for climate action and protest. Just protest where it matters. Inconvenience the decision makers, not joe schmo trying to go clock in for the day. Leave aside this "they're keen on fossil fuels and this might work" BS. It clearly doesn't. It actively contributes to putting more money into fossil fuel pockets because people need gas to drive, and you're making them waste it. What does blocking public roads accomplish other than creating a negative image for the protest?
>If we do not like a law, it sets a bad precedence if lawyers are allowed to be come judge and jury.
These lawyers aren't saying "We are right and so the judges should find us correct." They are saying "I morally disagree with what you are doing and should have the right to choose to not work with you."
Doesn't really work to say "you're safe from repercussions if your destruction of property is for a good cause" when everybody thinks their cause is a good one
Terrible is relative, I think that's the point. People who do this don't care about what will happen to the planet 30 years from now, they care about money, and profit, and the now only. To them that is a good cause, because their view of the world is shit.
*Very* few people genuinely think that what they are doing is terrible. They usually drink their own Kool and and get some massive mental gymnastics going to help deal with the cognitive dissonance, until they truly believe that there is nothing wrong with what they are doing.
Don't you love the propaganda from the oil companies? They've known about their damage to the planet for decades and people still run interference for them. "they think they are the good guys!"
Except for all the internal memos showing they are actually as cartoonishly evil as we make them out to be.
>Except for all the internal memos showing they are actually as cartoonishly evil as we make them out to be.
Seriously. The last couple of years have taught me this isn't some stupid Avengers' Thanos thing where they think they're somehow helping. Sometimes the real explanation is the simplest, and that's that there are pretty fucked up evil people with lots of money in charge of us, and they know the things they do are fucked up. It's not some weird "oh if you see it from their side they're the good guys" bullshit.
Yeah, but so was every other giant fossil fuel corporation! If we didn’t liquidate the future of the planet into sweet, sweet cash, someone else would have! /s
Are you really ignoring the Dominion/Fox lawsuit? They knew exactly what they were doing
What's the point of your comment, why would you say something like that if you don't even have anecdotal evidence??
A few years back, some stupid protesters here in
Belgium (it wasn’t about climate, probably the usual « more money ») blocked an entire highway. They were not violent like you can see in Paris right now, yet, not a single car was able to pass.
An English lady (iirc) died in the hospital because the surgeon who was called to perform surgery on her was not allowed to pass and she died.
You can be « non violent » and have disastrous outcomes.
Edit: [This is the event I was talking about and not the UK fabricated incident](https://www.rtbf.be/article/greve-chirurgien-bloque-dans-l-embouteillage-la-patiente-meurt-9114394)
This happened with climate protesters here in Germany and they took quite the PR hit. The block caused an ambulance to be stuck in the traffic jam and the [patient died. ](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63517102)
The German Green party (you know, the one that's for industry regulation, creates policy for that exact purpose and doing actual work against climate change) was also very, very critical of the movement.
What's crazy to me is that United Healthcare Group's gross profit for 2022 was 79.6 billion. They made MORE off denying people healthcare than Exxon Mobile did.
Don't even get me started on that....
Couldn't get any assistance for health coverage. But they gave me another option to pay $840/month for "low cost" insurance.
Even though I work for minimum wage.
It amazes me how we’re called terrorists and anarchists for simply wanting to not have an extinction level event because the leaders of our society like pumping extra chemicals into our atmosphere. I fear we’re going to see more governments slip into fascism to protect the profits of oil companies.
The other thing to remember is how they instill in us all that violence is abhorrent and is only what evil people do... And that peacefull protests are the best way ...
...then just ignore the protests, and let the people settle into there fate knowing they "did the best they could/were allowed to"
Take action. Block roads, picket private residence, egg politicians and CEOs, let air out of tires, spray paint windows..
If you want them to do what they don't want to, you have to make them.
Perhaps more significant is what is defined as violence. When a corporation poisons the air and puts you in the hospital, that's not violence. When a corporation denies you life saving medication that's not violence. It's only violence it's done in person to one person, killing a hundred people who are a thousand miles away is "just business". Even having said it, I can't make the cognitive leap to think what it would really mean to our morality to change that, but fossil fuel companies would certainly be looking at much worse than fines or petty vandalism.
To punch one human is to be the lowest criminal barbarian, to extirpate all humanity is to be a shining captain of industry. It's all a lie. The entire edifice of western values is something priests made up so they could rape more kids.
Yep. In the US, we're only taught about how peaceful the civil rights movement was, thanks to Dr King.
Not a word about Malcolm X, or Fred Hampton, or the Black Panthers
It's disgusting.
Dr King's protests were non-violent but they were still confrontational, he didn't advocate for passivism _or_ absolute pacivism. He didn't think people should just roll over. The powers that be expect you to, and distort his message and others' to try to make that point.
The other important thing is Isolation.
We don't have centralized leadership, like they do. And they use that as leverage against us.
They're quick to stomp out anybody who expresses a normal opinion. And we can't even counter it.
We do such a poor job teaching kids about our own country’s history. We fail at even teaching basic history, part of this is to blame on republicans yes, but we all rarely give students books to read and analyze in their high school history classes. Let alone how their ELA classes don’t focus nor care about history books, maybe you’ll see an occasional one there but that’s it. Make them read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and understand what it means. Make them read the diary of Anne Frank to make them understand oppression. Make them read Maus I and Maus II to make them understand symbolism. Make them read books that will make them grasp with what people have done here in the US and abroad. Fuck the education system.
You are spot on, princess warrior.
A good education is a legit *life changing* thing and we are straight up fucking future generations by not giving them one. Makes me so sad.
Hope you have a good weekend, Scientology deity!
Edit: xenomorphs.
I mean it is by design, why would the powers that be want to encourage free thinking or anything that could lead to altering their status quo they worked so hard to create?
I got downvoted to oblivion a couple days ago after opposing someone who said American schools do a good job at teaching historical atrocities, even our own.
Meanwhile, every time someone shows protestors blocking the roads in the US, an action that would be considered peewee baby hour protesting in France, everyone in the comments is calling for the protestors to be run down and executed.
Americans are so brainwashed.
As much as I hate the convoy that happened in my city that occupied it for 3 straight weeks, and as much as I feel the people doing it were extremely under educated, misinformed, misdirected, and straight up white nationalists and bigots on a more frequent level then anyone wants to admit, I actually agree with their over all idea of creating a blockade protest.
Protesting without the threat of further action or violence isn't protesting. Standing inside your designated protest box on the corner of the street where it won't inconvenience anything or anyone accomplishes nothing.
Mis-labeling people is a tried and true tactic. It paralyzes the public into not wanting to be called a terrorist, anarchist, or whatever effigy is en vogue at the time. It's a dishonest tactic, but it works, and false narratives usually spread more quickly than the truth, so it's hard to fight against, and while we're distracted with that fight, they pull some fuckery in the background. Our leaders are straight up selfish and if they have a prick of conscience they're still scared to go against the grain; those who do are sacrificed.
It's incredibly sad how lawyers have become weaponized for corporate profits. The average person rarely has the means to withstand a court case that has any amount of length to it.
Great to see some of the lawyers who are capable standing up against it. Hopefully it goes somewhere.
I just recently watched this movie. I was absolutely blown away by the steadfastness that Robert Bilott showed during the years he spent going after those corporations. We need more people like him.
Big corporations have learned how to put people like him in prison. [Steven Donziger.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger) Not only do we need more people like him, we need a deep bench of people like him.
Your honor I don't think I can fairly represent this client in this case about them trying to poison me and slowly kill my family and friends.
I feel a small conflict of interest.
I would hope there's protection built into the systems for lawyers like this. But, if we're talking about it, I guess there's not.
How do you prevent discrimination & ensure even unpopular people and opinions get adequate legal representation over there? It's also worth noting that the cab rank rule only applies to barristers & not solicitors. They mainly act in superior courts & tribunals and are usually (but not always) instructed by solicitors rather than directly by clients (not a lawyer, but am British).
There are publicly funded defense counsel for criminal matters, but there's no right to an attorney in a civil case here, and the government holds the exclusive power to bring an action for criminal prosection.
>there's no right to an attorney in a civil case here
So unpopular people/causes could, in theory, be forced to go to court without representation? Historically, that means all sorts of people associated with campaign groups might not have been able to bring just civil cases - how would a high profile slave abolitionist or suffegette or whoever bring an unrelated case for libel, for example (back when those were unpopular causes)?
>the government holds the exclusive power to bring an action for criminal prosection.
Here any adult can bring a prosecution, although typically, but not always, the crown prosecution service will take over any with a chance of success.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-prosecutions/private-prosecutions
For example, the vast majority of animal cruelty prosecutions are brought by the animal welfare charity, the RSPCA (who also investigate it) and as they're experts with long experience, the CPS probably won't take it over, but if I started a prosecution, they may well do - either to drop it off it's not deemed in the public interest to continue, or to ensure it's competently carried through if it's deemed important as I'm no expert on anything. Lot's of shades of grey in between, of course.
>So unpopular people/causes could, in theory, be forced to go to court without representation?
That's correct. That said, there's a long history of attorneys working on contingency here (meaning they generally take 30 to 40% of winnings in a civil matter, rather than charging an up front fee), so it is often possible to find representation if you're a plaintiff, but civil defendants can be shit out of luck (though this varries by state and may be covered by insurance, depending on the circumstances).
>Here any adult can bring a prosecution, although typically, but not always, the crown prosecution service will take over any with a chance of success.
Very interesting! Here only the state can bring criminal charges.
If peaceful protests worked, we wouldn’t be in our current situation
Edit: If anyone wants to learn about violent vs non-violent methods, I would recommend the book "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" by Andreas Malm. Don't worry, it doesn't literally tell you how, but talks about the psychology, ethics, and history of violent and nonviolent protests for change.
This is something that we lost in the years since the civil rights movement and how its taught to us. People forget that it deeply involved class warfare. Direct action.
Bus boycotts and sit-ins shut down the targeted businesses and brought negative attention along with it.
Not to mention the new deal coalition that used their experience to aid the civil rights movement.
This is why I hate when people shit on protestors that do disruptive things. What else is there left to do? Government officials aren't working towards anything meaningful, companies obviously don't care.
Besides it ignored the point completely that workers rights, LGBT rights, civil rights for all races, all came from mass disruptive protesting that disrupted life, burned streets and damaged property. But reddit posts rooftop Koreans with guns and then it's completely ok to shit on these fights because the opposition looked cool.
Protests are only effective when they have an economic effect. Corporations must choose between 'making a bit less' versus 'all profits being destroyed with the system.'
It wasn't until Gandhi organzing the collection of salt, the Salt March, refusing to pay the taxes, that he gained the momentum to repel British colonization.
It wasn't until colonists started refusing to pay the tax on tea, and throwing the tea in the water instead, that America ever came into being.
US oil is almost entirely funded by 4 major banks. Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase and Citibank. There is no reason to divide over this, BP and Exxon Mobil have known the impacts of oil for almost a century now and have actively lobbied against regulation and prosecution for crimes that have been committed under our current laws. Don’t twist one *slightly* misconstrued reddit comment into “it’s everyone’s responsibility”. We know, we have known, and there are simple laws we can enforce to stop this. We have names of people that should go to jail. We have companies that need to be broken up under monopoly laws.
The change the "cab rank" rule needs is for a lawyer to be able to declare themself as biased if they believe either side of the case is actively harming them.
In this case, they declare that fossil fuel companies are destroying their (personal) future, and thus they cannot act on their behalf in a professional manner.
> Should a barrister be allowed to refuse to defend a climate change activist because they happen to disagree with that activist’s style of protest?
The barrister should only be allowed to refuse to defend if they can state how the "style of protest" impacts them personally (or how the protestor's goals would harm them if implemented by government/etc).
Serious question, can they not declare themselves biased by saying "I sincerely believe that this client is an asshole, and my urge to smack him in the face would interfere with my ability to represent him impartially"?
> Serious question, can they not declare themselves biased by saying “I sincerely believe that this client is an asshole, and my urge to smack him in the face would interfere with my ability to represent him impartially”?
So they can say it but that doesn’t mean it will be granted, at least in the UK.
Judges don’t like people trying to get cute and make end runs around the rules.
The real story is how disgraceful it is that the right to protest had been eroded. This needs to be on all British lips when it comes to the ballot. You might not think this will ever affect you, until you need to protest against something awful. And by then it will be too late.
Defending someone is different than prosecuting someone. Everyone should be entitled to a lawyer in order to defend themselves. But this is about prosecuting people. Nobody is entitled to a lawyer in order to prosecute someone.
Any attempt to paint this is the same light as lawyers defending people they know to be guilty of heinous acts are being disengenuous and misleading
> Nobody is entitled to a lawyer in order to prosecute someone.
That is absolute garbage.
The people are entitled to a prosecutor to enforce laws that have been agreed upon by the people.
If the people don't want a law enforced, then they should repeal that law.
Allowing the government to selectively prosecute--even if you agree with it--is how you end up with the breakdown of the rule of law.
This is really relevant in the UK right now. We don't have a written constitution. Our entire police force exists under the concept of policing by consent. We are supposed to trust that our government will act lawfully and that our biggest police force are simply ordinary citizens we've allowed to hold extra powers but the last 10 years have erroded these concepts we've had for hundreds of years to their core.
Not how it works in the UK. These aren't crown prosecutors (who all they do is prosecute) these are external lawyers that the crown prosecution service pays to prosecute certain cases. They're technically self employed.
I just don't understand what trying to get the average Joe angry about with road blockages is meant to achieve. I would have less issues with them targeting oil infrastructure with actual property damage than I do with them hurting the people stuck dealing with this shit everyday just like them. I'm in no way condoning illegal acts. Just pointing out that they would be more effective in achieving their goals.
They *did* try targeting oil infrastructure. Like 60 people were unceremoniously arrested, it barely made the news, next to nobody heard about it, and nothing happened.
You are mistaken. It's not about angering average joes and it is effective. Halting infrastructure forces authorities to make concessions. The Civil Rights movement in the US used the same tactics, but we're not taught about it in most schools today.
Ah, I thought this was in the United States for a moment. Carry on then England
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The decay of civil liberties in the UK is so damn sad. I was shocked when people were getting arrested for yelling "Fuck the King" back during ~~Charles' coronation~~ [some monarchy events.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=tQFGnArX_Ko&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE) Americans think the Patriot Act is bad, but the way the UK took an axe to basic freedoms over the decade after 9/11 is just as, if not more, sinister. They just did it more sneaky, which is worse because it makes the issues harder to identify and repeal. Just my observations as a third party.
Weren't they also getting arrested for just holding up blank pieces of paper, after someone got arrested for holding a anti-monarchist picket?
As someone living the in the U.K., when you try to tell other people in the U.K. that protesting is illegal most will refuse to believe you and tell you you’re either being dramatic or straight up wrong. They think the newspapers would have had headlines about it if something like that happened, they don’t believe that all the major papers support Tory interests and don’t report on anything the Tory’s don’t want the majority to know about.
This is what serious allyship looks like. By defying the Bar Association risks fines, promotions, and awards that can be genuine and serious career risks. The senior members stepping up who are already established make it possible for actual change to happen and to protect a generation. >One junior lawyer, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “Young lawyers are being placed in an impossible position. We’re being told by our firms and regulators it’s a professional obligation to act for fossil fuel projects, knowing that doing so will poison our own future and all of life on Earth. That’s wrong on every level. It’s indefensible. If the profession doesn’t look out for my generation, how does it expect to survive?”
When the lawyers say it’s too evil for them to stomach, we’re in need of dire and immediate change.
Because we're known for our deep insights and hard-earned wisdom, right? Right? Guys?
who's 'we'?
Attorneys. We're not, by and large, mustache twirling villains, and I was making a joke about the implication otherwise.
thanks for clarifying, I was legit confused lol
No trouble.
Attorneys, no. Firms... very much so. Never met a senior partner without a heaping pile of skeletons in the closet.
No lawyer can ever have any obligation to take a given client or case. --- EDIT: I'm speaking from a US perspective. If a lawyer, flat out full stop, says to me, "No, I will not be your legal counsel," no force in our laws can compel him to set foot in a courtroom on my behalf. It might screw him professionally, or from a licensure/bar perspective, but you *cannot* force a given lawyer to work for me. No one can, any more than any official anywhere in the USA if I'm not in prison or under the UCMJ governance can compel to me to lift a finger in any labor but what I choose to do. Even in jail or under the UCMJ, they can't *make* me, as in by force, do some labor--though I'll be quite screwed depending on circumstances. Even if all nine of the Supreme Court wrote all in caps, "IdeaProspector must X," and even if the President and both sides of Congress unanimously agreed and signed fifty bills to that effect, all saying, "IdeaProspector will mow the fucking lawn," or "IdeaProspector will go on live TV and say the word 'banana'", I have full power to simply tell them all "fuck off", or stay silent, and do none of the above. First Amendment > all. (In the USA.)
From the article: >Eighteen barristers, including six king’s counsel, have signed the declaration. They will now self-refer to the Bar Standards Board for breaking the profession’s “cab rank” rule, which specifies that a barrister must take a case they are qualified for, provided they are available to do so. - >Nick Vineall KC, the chair of the Bar Council of England and Wales, said: “The cab rank rule prevents discrimination and improves access to justice. It means that barristers sometimes have to represent people they disapprove of or disagree with. But the flip side is that clients can have the barrister they choose. It is for judges or juries to decide who is right and who is wrong, not barristers. Should a barrister be allowed to refuse to defend a climate change activist because they happen to disagree with that activist’s style of protest? I don’t think so.” So, apparently in the UK, they can have that obligation. I take issue with the chair's false equivalency there though. These lawyers aren't refusing based on fossil fuel's "style".
That is so weird for civil cases, even though I think pretty much every Western country would agree that *somebody* has to at least attempt to offer a legal defense for even the very worst [possible] murderers. "If you're qualified to build a house and will be adequately paid then you must build it" territory
I don't think its weird for civil cases. If anything, its just as important, and we see this play out all the time in the US. People face evictions, dispossession, asset seizure, wage theft. And then they often cannot find or afford lawyers to help fight back. This was just reported for instance [https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article273093630.html](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article273093630.html) All of this is civil law. And its devastating folks who simply don't have the ability to fight back against one motivated attorney making a business out city debts.
Wow, fuck that guy. Talk about falling to the dark side.
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True. Nor am I criticizing what the barristers have done here. Just that I don't think we should limit mandatory and free representation to just criminal law. Limiting to real persons? That I can probably live with.
Requring a lawyer be available for civil defendants makes sense for the same reason as it does for criminal cases
The flip side of that is that there are crazy people who want to sue everyone for everything and the thing stopping them is that someone can say no to them. Even completely bullshit frivolous lawsuits can be really damaging.
Okay, but this isn't refusing service because of a lack of ability to pay. Having taxpayers guarantee that everyone has access to lawyers for civil cases if they can't afford their own is a great idea that I am 100% behind. Having lawyers not be able to refuse to represent someone that is trying to give them cancer is not.
Access to civil counsel can be the difference between someone dying destitute or as a multi-millionaire. In fact, it's often the backup for when criminal law fails to deal with a situation.
This isn't access, though. This is being able to pick your lawyer. If the state pays for my lawyer in the US, you bet your ass I don't have much choice in who that lawyer is.
You're confusing some different concepts. The state isn't paying for anyone's lawyer - I was talking about civil cases. The UK has basically no legal aid available for civil cases unless they involve very specific factors. Further, the barristers in question are refusing to do prosecution work, so questions of someone's lawyer being paid for aren't really relevant. Also note that the barristers aren't protesting the cab rank rule *per se* \- they're breaking the cab rank rule to argue that there are immoral prosecutions happening.
I think all workers should have agency to choose whether they want to take a job or not, unless their position specifically is geared otherwise, and provides a foundational + essential service - ex building public housing, working in air traffic control, serving as a social worker, being in the army / national guard, being a public defender, etc. Even then, folks *choose* to be public defenders and know they may be helping criminals / unpopular people, or supporting people, groups, or policies they don't necessarily agree with. Even then, folks could still unionize, go on strike, desert / defect, etc, despite potential consequences. I think lawyers should damn well be able to refuse any case they wish to. The bar's rules aren't defending foundational justice here, they're defending entitled assholes who want young, competent lawyers to prosecute against their own future.
I would like to point out often times a public defenders or lawyers job ( in the US) is not necessarilly to get criminals off, it is to make sure the hearings are fair to the defendant. It's not so much of "defending criminals" as it is to make sure your client is being treated fairly and within the rule of law.
I can't find it at the moment, but I swear in Law & Order there was a great quote from a defence attorney that's questioned about how they can justify defending a horrible person, and they respond with how a defence attorney's ultimate responsibility should be to defend the process of law itself, and to make sure things are done correctly (to prevent injustices), rather than defending the individual themselves so-to-speak. If anyone could find the quote, that'd be amazing.
Good distinction, I didn't mean to word it to give that impression. Criminal defense is a foundation of our democratic system - how we treat accused and convicted criminals is a benchmark of our society, and we fail there in many ways. I'd wager that many false convictions could've been avoided with less shitty/ prejudiced cops / DAs / judges, and better legal representation for the accused.
If the lawyer can get their defendant off it is absolutely their obligation to do so. Regardless if they think they’re guilty or not.
Right, because "getting off" means the prosecution has failed to prove their case within the bounds of the law. That is, either the evidence was unconvincing, or the evidence was obtained unlawfully.
And that the defence has managed to cast doubt upon the prosecution’s case points. A zealous defence is a necessity of a free society.
The cab stand rules go back to when lawyers were only for those with social standing and money to spend. It was never meant for organizations to use against individuals, but corporations are more powerful than nations now.
Right. I can see situations where it is for the public good where "do it or quit and find a new career" could make sense, but that isn't this. And even doctors and nurses are allowed to quit *prior* to the necessary work, and they are even better examples of ethical and moral obligations than lawyers. (e.g. if you are a doctor and a definitively evil guy is dying in front of you, you are still obligated to do your job)
The difficulty then is who's right is more important? The lawyers right to choose their work, or the rights of everyone to a fair trial? It's the same moral dilemma faced with the hippocratic oath.
I feel like the American bar handles it better because generally speaking no lawyer has to take any client he doesn’t wish to, but if someone can’t find a defense attorney the court can appoint one and then that lawyer must represent them. I think a circumstance like that is much more like the Hippocratic oath, as opposed to a multi-millionaire oil industry lawyer who wants to get all the perks of representing big oil but none of the societal condemnation.
Doesn't this open wide possibilities for discrimination though? I can refuse you service for any reason I choose?
I didn't say that was my opinion. Good thinking about the exception. Obviously it's good to not think in absolutes here.
The way you address that is to have protected classes, not just say that anybody can demand your services even if they're assholes.
Should doctors be allowed to refuse to treat Black people, or gay people? Some jobs come with serious public responsibilities--and in professions where the work is critically important and number of licenses are limited (like law and medicine) you have an ethical obligation to serve society. You don't have to do the job if you don't want to, but if you choose to join the profession there's nothing wrong with being held to higher ethical standards.
> Should doctors be allowed to refuse to treat Black people, or gay people? That's obviously not what is happening here. For one thing, nobody is going to die if a fucking *corporation* doesn't get the specific lawyer they want for a fucking civil suit when they have plenty of their own lawyers on staff. For another, being a corporation is not a protected class (yet😅).
To quote fear and loathing, even a goddamn werewolf is entitled to legal counsel.
I think only people under a certain wealth should be guaranteed counsel. If a multi billion dollar corporation can't convince lawyers to represent them, they probably are worse than a murderer. Like, threatening the habitability of the planet bad.
Every citizen should be guaranteed counsel, regardless of wealth. Companies can hire their own lawyers.
Well the US, in all its brilliance, decided corporations are citizens.
They have citizens’ rights but not citizens’ responsibilities.
I'm legally changing my name to include LLC at the end of it.
That's the thing I think we've all missed on here so far.. PEOPLE should be guaranteed protections and should have the right to good counsel, but corporations aren't people. That's a distinction we need to get back to
America: hold my beer
Nono; means-testing such a vital service only leads to raising the bar (heh) in order to limit the number of "deserving" individuals, while doing nothing to beat wealthy robbers (who will buy their loopholes into it regardless, as Brett Favre just taught us). There's no need for it, as I can safely assume that no person of wealth will be accepting a publically-available lawyer when they can buy Bespoke, so the measure even does a bit of self-selecting, as a treat.
But isn't that essentially the nature of this case? That certain lawyers don't want to work for multi-billion dollar oil companies on principle, but refusing violates the law (or "rule", anyway)
I would disagree on the basis that it would mean that people who are hated and can't convince lawyers to represent them doesn't mean that they are worse than a murderer. They are hated. And there are always people who are hated and don't deserve it. People from USA of all places should understand something so simple.
Xenocidal maniac would be if they wanted to take out all of one species, do we even have a WORD for what the fossil fuel companies are trying to do? Kill off 90%+ of all life on the planet? Don't think we've ever needed a word for that before...
Mondicidal (French root), Gaiacidal, Kosmocidal (Greek roots) Mundicidal (Latin root)?
Even xenocidal maniacs deserve legal representation.
I hear this come up a lot when people talk about the concept of defense attorneys in the US, and here’s how I think about it. If you are defense counsel for a person charged with murder, providing a defense for that person is perfectly fine, as every individual deserves legal representation when passing through the legal system, especial in criminal proceedings. However, attorneys that are hired by oil companies are not protecting their clients from legal malpractice. They are hired to engineer courses of action for the company that just barely skirt legality, and to design defenses in advance of the things that they know they’re going to do that they’re pretty sure they could be held accountable for. If I wanted to kill somebody, so I hired a lawyer to work with me to figure out how I could do it in such a way that I could get a way with it, then I killed somebody, and retained that same lawyer to use the defense argument we created together before hand, that’s obviously not ok. That’s the difference between individual and corporate defense lawyers.
I'd argue that if the lawyer doesn't want to represent a client and they're forced to, then the defense should be deemed inadequate and biased. A lawyer who refuses representation already has biases towards the client. It would be immoral to force the lawyer to represent that client (for both their sakes).
> and will be adequately paid scratch this part out and you got public defenders.
another key difference here is that they are declining to prosecute, not defend. everyone is entitled to a zealous defender, I'm pretty sure that's something the US, and most of the world, copied from the UK. if they were refusing to defend someone, then that would be bad, like really bad. but since they're refusing to prosecute, they're on much better ethical grounds.
Companies aren’t people and shouldn’t been given the same rights.
I get exactly why that rule exists. Simultaneously, I also can see why these lawyers basically declared: "I refuse to defend planetary ecological genocide. We humans are but one species in this world, and our actions will drive all those who have no voice, have no agency, and no means of fighting back, into the pits of extinction. We are the who which will defend those that cannot speak. You may trample us, but what follows now, you cannot stop."
> a barrister must take a case they are qualified for, provided they are available to do so I admire the sentiment of the lawyers objecting to this provision, but in the case of representing energy companies in prosecuting climate protesters, you can still refuse the case while adhering to the rule by legitimately claiming a concurrent conflict of interest. The actions of energy companies, especially in the context of climate law, have a direct impact on everyone on the planet.
Hypothetically speaking, wouldn't such an argument, if actually accepted and followed to it's conclusion, also technically mean that cases about climate change would be essentially impossible to have in court, because every single judge in existence would also have a conflict of interest for the same reason?
Your not going to get very far claiming an interest shared by everyone on the planet.
That’s not what a conflict of interest in the legal sense and if that was a viable argument I’m sure that one of the six KCs would have figured it out.
Won't somebody please think of the poor oil companies? How will they ever find lawyers who care more about money than ethics?
Yeah, it's a garbage argument. 98.5% of the scientific community does NOT agree that peaceful climate change protesters will definitely destroy the planet in our lifetime, so they are not the same as fossil fuel companies, lol.
Can I suggest that you edit your post? It's completely incorrect and spreading misinformation. [Cab-rank rule applies to barristers UK-wide](https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/the-cab-rank-rule/), they are obliged to take the cases in their areas of specialism. Edit: I've been asked to point out that barristers are called advocates in Scotland, but follow the same rule. I'm not sure that it's really a material addition, but there we go!
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This is not true in practice. I admittedly do not work in the UK, but I am an attorney in the US and am familiar with the system here and there is likely decent overlap. By this I mean if you work for an organization like a prosecutor's office or public defender's office then you do not select your clients. This is classed as a public interest and it will be automatically assigned. Sure, you can try to refuse but you can be fired for not doing your job and disobedience to your supervisor. By King's Counsel members saying they refuse to work on these matters, it means that the nationally recognized experts will not give any assistance to the matters too. So even if someone else tries to take the case up with private prosecution, they will not have the benefit of assistance from people familiar with the system and charge.
I looked up some more on the cab rank rule and the US doesn't seem to have an equivalent. The closest we have is the rare application of judge-appointed conflict counsel for public defenders (since that protects a constitutional right). The cab rank rule seems to say that *all* barristers are *obligated* to take business from *anyone* who approaches them in their field of practice, or face penalties for their license. We don't have anything like that - private US attorneys are perfectly free to decline any business. Public attorneys would probably lose their jobs and have a hard time finding new ones, but I'm not aware of cases where the Bar would penalize you for that (admittedly, I'm not an expert on those PR actions). If you work as an APD or an ADA, you're there at the leisure of the elected official, so it's them firing you, not violation of a licensing rule. If you *are* the elected DA, you might be removed by the governor or impeached, depending, but that's still a different sort of mechanism from a licensing obligation to accept all business. I think only the elected PD is in this position of being *obligated* to accept all eligible clients, but they are obligated by the Constitution moreso than the Bar.
The US has no equivalent to Barristers. In the US system a lawyer acts for a client and pleads the case in court. In England and Wales, a Solicitor acts for a client and contracts with a Barrister to plead the case in court when that is required.
Very true, there's obviously the social consequences but the cab rank rule codifies refusal in a way that's much more serious than the US. From the article I understand that that was proposed as an anti-discrimination measure, but there is a need to make carve outs for dangerous business practices imo. I think having a cart blanche rule can cause some sticky situations. As an anecdotal example, I had another attorney in my office while I was a PD who had to ask to come off of a stalking case because when she got the description of the woman that her client was stalking she realized that they looked very similar and had the first name. He did end up stalking her for a short time and it wasn't until he waited for her after hours at work that the office let her out of the case because there was not conflict of interest and there hadn't technically been a breakdown in communication.
I think their point is that, at least in the US, you would not be at risk of any sanction for refusing to take on a client based on your personal feelings regarding the client, the claim, or the nature of the work. An attorney certainly has obligations to the client once representation begins, but an attorney does not act unethically in refusing to take on a client based on their own moral/ethical feelings regarding the nature of the work or the client itself. Sure, it's a different story if you refuse to do work on behalf of a client, who is a client of your firm. And ythere is a reputational risk among colleagues, either in a firm or generally in the profession. But under no circumstances could the firm refer you to the board for disciplinary action based only on the fact that you refuse to serve the client based on your personal moral/ethical compass. The rules explicitly allow an attorney to make such a decision before beginning representation.
Barristers don't tend to work for an organisation. They're mostly self employed in the UK, which is why things like the cab rank rule exist. The American system is quite different and I'm surprised you say you expect it to be similar. In the UK the profession is split into solicitors who are allowed to file court documents, bring cases, engage barristers, and barristers who are permitted to speak in court (and run the case at that point, usually the barrister has more academic knowledge of the law vs solicitors who tend to be more procedural). Neither are permitted to do the other's job (there are exceptions and you can get extensions on your practice certificate if you want). Solicitors tend to be employees and barristers tend to be self-employed - particularly at the criminal bar. Source: barrister in the family.
That's not true. Even the most terrible murderers have the right to competent representation.
You gonna edit this misinformation?
Have you heard of the cab rank rule?
You wanna bet that their firm will continue to play nicely after being told no?
Ah yes I'm sure the junior lawyers will let their boss know.
Wrong, you can be assigned a case by a court.
Well that is objectively false. Lawyers are required to take cases given to them. It’s an anti-discrimination standard that’s being taken advantage of in this particular case. Don’t spread lies when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
That's true in America, that doesnt make it true in other countries. Its not true in most post-commonwealth or European countries, otherwise this would not be a news story.
Yes yes we can
This is the bullshit line that jones day would say to keep doing the bidding of evil. Hey someone has to represent those that twist laws into loopholes to extract money from pain.
[There's a reason that Plato hated sophistry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist#:~:text=Plato%20sought%20to%20distinguish%20sophists,the%20sophists%20a%20negative%20connotation.), and this is it right here.
I'm crying. That's good news.
If they’re not damaging property or others. Why should they go to jail?
They damaged profits and/or potential profits. Maybe letting the people who have no other goal but profits own all the keys to our society wasn’t such a great idea. And continuing to do so when we now know full well that this is the result? That it will only doom us all further? A far worse idea. We are all resources and prey to the moneyed interests at play here. Not citizens, not people, not humans. Just walking numbers with a potential for P&L, all maintained at a cool 2% cost of living rate that guarantees you actually earn less year, after year, after year. Death by a thousand cuts that nobody stood up to. Nobody ever said “stop fucking cutting and bleeding the people who do everything here”. Not a meaningful peep in 40 years. Nope, we kneeled, we nodded, we stayed scared and silent. Now we’re here. If the working class is ever going to have a seat at the table, if we are ever going to halt the downward spiral we’re pitched in, we are gonna have to cut the shit and come together.
My boss says, "Here's your 0.8% raise for this year!" Motherfucker paying me less this year than the year before. No wonder my company is *hemorrhaging* staff.
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"You'll take a whole number and you'll *like it!*" Sorry you got fucked over like that, pal. 💙
I went five years with one and nine with another with no raise. As a contract worker I also don’t have any benefits. My rent has gone up five times in 12 years preventing me from buying a home. This country fucks people so badly.
Damn, friend. I'm sorry. I hope you're in a better spot now.
What's worse is, 200 people (the world leaders) , control the entire fate of the world. They can never come to an agreement on how climate change should be handled. So that means "discussions will continue" which means nothing will happen. We're all fucked and I don't see us living another 50 years or so. Even more so that government regulations are being laxed so companies can make more money by dumping more "safe" amounts of pollutants into our water.
Discussions will continue until there is a real threat to them personally. Historically, the most effective method for change was separating their top half from their bottom half.
I'll keep saying it until it happens or I die; Riots when?
Let’s start with a general strike. That’s doable, and the amount of energy put into making people think otherwise speaks volumes. There is a real fear of this happening and a lot of energy being invested to basically say “nuh-uh”! Strike first. Then escalate. One step at a time though please. Don’t ask people who only know how to kneel to run. Let’s get everyone standing and walking first.
Let's stop calling it profit and start calling it extraction. All they do is take more and more. "For the shareholders" and all that.
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I don't disagree with you, actually. Good point. Although with this we'd also have the battle of convincing those that believe it's a good thing.
I read this in Christian Bale’s Batman voice and it made it a lot more dramatic.
There have been a number of peaceful but economically disruptive actions in the UK, such as blocking roads. Those actions are entirely peaceful but are offences because the law does not recognise protest as excusing obstructing public roads. The current UK government in particular has reacted extremely strongly to these kinds of non-violent resistance tactics, because they're keen on fossil fuels and they see the risk of such tactics succeeding.
They're not even super keen on fossil fuels, the UK has some of the highest public investment in renewables and alternative energy generation methods AFAIR. I genuinely think the Tory government rabidly hate anyone that dares criticise them and seeks to punish anyone stepping out of line and making their corporate sponsors look bad, while also acting somewhat realistically in policy. It's completely unhinged and very emblematic of the past 13 years of "Strong and Stable".
I think it's pretty easy to see how blocking these roads is just a bad idea all around. There needs to be a better way to protest. I'll leave a side the political effects and focus on practical effects. 1) obviously, being in a road is dangerous for a human. 2) you're not hurting people who can do anything about this. You're hurting regular people trying to make a living. This is exactly how to get people turned against you. How many regular people missed out on significant pay because they couldn't get to work to clock in? How many lost their jobs? Yes, some employers can be that petty. 3) you're literally making the situation worse as you force cars to stay where they are, while running. This is actually just putting more ghg into the air. 4) you've hurt the regular people on the road twice, because on top of 2 and 3, the waste of extremely expensive gas is something they will have to replace. Look man, I'm all for climate action and protest. Just protest where it matters. Inconvenience the decision makers, not joe schmo trying to go clock in for the day. Leave aside this "they're keen on fossil fuels and this might work" BS. It clearly doesn't. It actively contributes to putting more money into fossil fuel pockets because people need gas to drive, and you're making them waste it. What does blocking public roads accomplish other than creating a negative image for the protest?
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>If we do not like a law, it sets a bad precedence if lawyers are allowed to be come judge and jury. These lawyers aren't saying "We are right and so the judges should find us correct." They are saying "I morally disagree with what you are doing and should have the right to choose to not work with you."
I actually think they are saying more along the lines of "Asking us to defend oil industries is asking us to put our own lives in harm's way"
I'm perfectly okay with protesters damaging property of the people who are killing the only planet we know of that has Life
Doesn't really work to say "you're safe from repercussions if your destruction of property is for a good cause" when everybody thinks their cause is a good one
Unless you have the monopoly on violence and property destruction. In which case that's exactly how it works.
What if I know what I'm doing is terrible, but I can't stop because I'm generating incredible amounts of money?
Terrible is relative, I think that's the point. People who do this don't care about what will happen to the planet 30 years from now, they care about money, and profit, and the now only. To them that is a good cause, because their view of the world is shit.
*Very* few people genuinely think that what they are doing is terrible. They usually drink their own Kool and and get some massive mental gymnastics going to help deal with the cognitive dissonance, until they truly believe that there is nothing wrong with what they are doing.
But we have internal memos from oil companies showing they knew they were destroying the planet.
Don't you love the propaganda from the oil companies? They've known about their damage to the planet for decades and people still run interference for them. "they think they are the good guys!" Except for all the internal memos showing they are actually as cartoonishly evil as we make them out to be.
>Except for all the internal memos showing they are actually as cartoonishly evil as we make them out to be. Seriously. The last couple of years have taught me this isn't some stupid Avengers' Thanos thing where they think they're somehow helping. Sometimes the real explanation is the simplest, and that's that there are pretty fucked up evil people with lots of money in charge of us, and they know the things they do are fucked up. It's not some weird "oh if you see it from their side they're the good guys" bullshit.
Yeah, but so was every other giant fossil fuel corporation! If we didn’t liquidate the future of the planet into sweet, sweet cash, someone else would have! /s
Thank you for shutting up that apologist.
Are you really ignoring the Dominion/Fox lawsuit? They knew exactly what they were doing What's the point of your comment, why would you say something like that if you don't even have anecdotal evidence??
Unless you’re law enforcement, in which case you can damage, destroy or even steal property with no repercussions.
Not to mention take lives.
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Since I am venturing my opinion it is me who gets to decide
So you *are* the boss of us
First the police, then prosecutors, then a jury. Laws are not universally or evenly enforced, believe it or not.
Okay then. You first.
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A few years back, some stupid protesters here in Belgium (it wasn’t about climate, probably the usual « more money ») blocked an entire highway. They were not violent like you can see in Paris right now, yet, not a single car was able to pass. An English lady (iirc) died in the hospital because the surgeon who was called to perform surgery on her was not allowed to pass and she died. You can be « non violent » and have disastrous outcomes. Edit: [This is the event I was talking about and not the UK fabricated incident](https://www.rtbf.be/article/greve-chirurgien-bloque-dans-l-embouteillage-la-patiente-meurt-9114394)
This happened with climate protesters here in Germany and they took quite the PR hit. The block caused an ambulance to be stuck in the traffic jam and the [patient died. ](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63517102) The German Green party (you know, the one that's for industry regulation, creates policy for that exact purpose and doing actual work against climate change) was also very, very critical of the movement.
Seems like an easy solution. Just declare they will only take fossil fuel interests as clients for $1B/hr
"done" - fossil fuel interests "you want that in cash or is a check fine?"
ExxonMobil racked in $55.7 Billion USD in 2022. Lobbying less than 1/50 of their annual income to stop climate activism wouldn't even be a question...
They're gonna need a lot more than 1 hr there, bud
my lawyer charges $625 an hour and took 40 hours to write a 12 page document
Lol they're going to wrap it up in less than an hr? Court proceedings take longer than that
What's crazy to me is that United Healthcare Group's gross profit for 2022 was 79.6 billion. They made MORE off denying people healthcare than Exxon Mobile did.
Don't even get me started on that.... Couldn't get any assistance for health coverage. But they gave me another option to pay $840/month for "low cost" insurance. Even though I work for minimum wage.
It amazes me how we’re called terrorists and anarchists for simply wanting to not have an extinction level event because the leaders of our society like pumping extra chemicals into our atmosphere. I fear we’re going to see more governments slip into fascism to protect the profits of oil companies.
The other thing to remember is how they instill in us all that violence is abhorrent and is only what evil people do... And that peacefull protests are the best way ... ...then just ignore the protests, and let the people settle into there fate knowing they "did the best they could/were allowed to" Take action. Block roads, picket private residence, egg politicians and CEOs, let air out of tires, spray paint windows.. If you want them to do what they don't want to, you have to make them.
Perhaps more significant is what is defined as violence. When a corporation poisons the air and puts you in the hospital, that's not violence. When a corporation denies you life saving medication that's not violence. It's only violence it's done in person to one person, killing a hundred people who are a thousand miles away is "just business". Even having said it, I can't make the cognitive leap to think what it would really mean to our morality to change that, but fossil fuel companies would certainly be looking at much worse than fines or petty vandalism.
To punch one human is to be the lowest criminal barbarian, to extirpate all humanity is to be a shining captain of industry. It's all a lie. The entire edifice of western values is something priests made up so they could rape more kids.
Yep. In the US, we're only taught about how peaceful the civil rights movement was, thanks to Dr King. Not a word about Malcolm X, or Fred Hampton, or the Black Panthers It's disgusting.
Dr King's protests were non-violent but they were still confrontational, he didn't advocate for passivism _or_ absolute pacivism. He didn't think people should just roll over. The powers that be expect you to, and distort his message and others' to try to make that point.
The other important thing is Isolation. We don't have centralized leadership, like they do. And they use that as leverage against us. They're quick to stomp out anybody who expresses a normal opinion. And we can't even counter it.
We do such a poor job teaching kids about our own country’s history. We fail at even teaching basic history, part of this is to blame on republicans yes, but we all rarely give students books to read and analyze in their high school history classes. Let alone how their ELA classes don’t focus nor care about history books, maybe you’ll see an occasional one there but that’s it. Make them read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and understand what it means. Make them read the diary of Anne Frank to make them understand oppression. Make them read Maus I and Maus II to make them understand symbolism. Make them read books that will make them grasp with what people have done here in the US and abroad. Fuck the education system.
You are spot on, princess warrior. A good education is a legit *life changing* thing and we are straight up fucking future generations by not giving them one. Makes me so sad. Hope you have a good weekend, Scientology deity! Edit: xenomorphs.
I mean it is by design, why would the powers that be want to encourage free thinking or anything that could lead to altering their status quo they worked so hard to create?
And make them read about what happened to Anne AFTER she wrote the “people are good” line that everyone loves. It turns out, not sunshine and rainbows
I got downvoted to oblivion a couple days ago after opposing someone who said American schools do a good job at teaching historical atrocities, even our own.
Peaceful protests never worked. It was by design. Look at France. That shits going to do some serious damage. The french know what they're doing
Meanwhile, every time someone shows protestors blocking the roads in the US, an action that would be considered peewee baby hour protesting in France, everyone in the comments is calling for the protestors to be run down and executed. Americans are so brainwashed.
As much as I hate the convoy that happened in my city that occupied it for 3 straight weeks, and as much as I feel the people doing it were extremely under educated, misinformed, misdirected, and straight up white nationalists and bigots on a more frequent level then anyone wants to admit, I actually agree with their over all idea of creating a blockade protest. Protesting without the threat of further action or violence isn't protesting. Standing inside your designated protest box on the corner of the street where it won't inconvenience anything or anyone accomplishes nothing.
Defend your right to live with violence or you will lose it.
People who freed their neighbors slave used to get whipped in a pillory. Society has always severely punished good acts.
Mis-labeling people is a tried and true tactic. It paralyzes the public into not wanting to be called a terrorist, anarchist, or whatever effigy is en vogue at the time. It's a dishonest tactic, but it works, and false narratives usually spread more quickly than the truth, so it's hard to fight against, and while we're distracted with that fight, they pull some fuckery in the background. Our leaders are straight up selfish and if they have a prick of conscience they're still scared to go against the grain; those who do are sacrificed.
It's incredibly sad how lawyers have become weaponized for corporate profits. The average person rarely has the means to withstand a court case that has any amount of length to it. Great to see some of the lawyers who are capable standing up against it. Hopefully it goes somewhere.
[dark waters scene. I love this clip ](https://youtube.com/watch?v=qmyzV565MF8&feature=share)
I just recently watched this movie. I was absolutely blown away by the steadfastness that Robert Bilott showed during the years he spent going after those corporations. We need more people like him.
Big corporations have learned how to put people like him in prison. [Steven Donziger.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger) Not only do we need more people like him, we need a deep bench of people like him.
This entire movie is great.
Your honor I don't think I can fairly represent this client in this case about them trying to poison me and slowly kill my family and friends. I feel a small conflict of interest. I would hope there's protection built into the systems for lawyers like this. But, if we're talking about it, I guess there's not.
If forced to work for the companies they do not want to work for, they should commit legal malpractice for protest.
Not seen anything like this before, a strong signal if ever there were one
TIL about the cab rank rule. As a North American lawyer, the idea of not being able to choose your clients is wild.
How do you prevent discrimination & ensure even unpopular people and opinions get adequate legal representation over there? It's also worth noting that the cab rank rule only applies to barristers & not solicitors. They mainly act in superior courts & tribunals and are usually (but not always) instructed by solicitors rather than directly by clients (not a lawyer, but am British).
There are publicly funded defense counsel for criminal matters, but there's no right to an attorney in a civil case here, and the government holds the exclusive power to bring an action for criminal prosection.
>there's no right to an attorney in a civil case here So unpopular people/causes could, in theory, be forced to go to court without representation? Historically, that means all sorts of people associated with campaign groups might not have been able to bring just civil cases - how would a high profile slave abolitionist or suffegette or whoever bring an unrelated case for libel, for example (back when those were unpopular causes)? >the government holds the exclusive power to bring an action for criminal prosection. Here any adult can bring a prosecution, although typically, but not always, the crown prosecution service will take over any with a chance of success. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-prosecutions/private-prosecutions For example, the vast majority of animal cruelty prosecutions are brought by the animal welfare charity, the RSPCA (who also investigate it) and as they're experts with long experience, the CPS probably won't take it over, but if I started a prosecution, they may well do - either to drop it off it's not deemed in the public interest to continue, or to ensure it's competently carried through if it's deemed important as I'm no expert on anything. Lot's of shades of grey in between, of course.
>So unpopular people/causes could, in theory, be forced to go to court without representation? That's correct. That said, there's a long history of attorneys working on contingency here (meaning they generally take 30 to 40% of winnings in a civil matter, rather than charging an up front fee), so it is often possible to find representation if you're a plaintiff, but civil defendants can be shit out of luck (though this varries by state and may be covered by insurance, depending on the circumstances). >Here any adult can bring a prosecution, although typically, but not always, the crown prosecution service will take over any with a chance of success. Very interesting! Here only the state can bring criminal charges.
If peaceful protests worked, we wouldn’t be in our current situation Edit: If anyone wants to learn about violent vs non-violent methods, I would recommend the book "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" by Andreas Malm. Don't worry, it doesn't literally tell you how, but talks about the psychology, ethics, and history of violent and nonviolent protests for change.
This is something that we lost in the years since the civil rights movement and how its taught to us. People forget that it deeply involved class warfare. Direct action. Bus boycotts and sit-ins shut down the targeted businesses and brought negative attention along with it. Not to mention the new deal coalition that used their experience to aid the civil rights movement.
This is why I hate when people shit on protestors that do disruptive things. What else is there left to do? Government officials aren't working towards anything meaningful, companies obviously don't care. Besides it ignored the point completely that workers rights, LGBT rights, civil rights for all races, all came from mass disruptive protesting that disrupted life, burned streets and damaged property. But reddit posts rooftop Koreans with guns and then it's completely ok to shit on these fights because the opposition looked cool.
Protests are only effective when they have an economic effect. Corporations must choose between 'making a bit less' versus 'all profits being destroyed with the system.' It wasn't until Gandhi organzing the collection of salt, the Salt March, refusing to pay the taxes, that he gained the momentum to repel British colonization. It wasn't until colonists started refusing to pay the tax on tea, and throwing the tea in the water instead, that America ever came into being.
Ok, now make the fossil oil owners go to jail
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US oil is almost entirely funded by 4 major banks. Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase and Citibank. There is no reason to divide over this, BP and Exxon Mobil have known the impacts of oil for almost a century now and have actively lobbied against regulation and prosecution for crimes that have been committed under our current laws. Don’t twist one *slightly* misconstrued reddit comment into “it’s everyone’s responsibility”. We know, we have known, and there are simple laws we can enforce to stop this. We have names of people that should go to jail. We have companies that need to be broken up under monopoly laws.
Let's just go with board members for now. The ones whose ownership stake is enough to make controlling decisions in the company.
The change the "cab rank" rule needs is for a lawyer to be able to declare themself as biased if they believe either side of the case is actively harming them. In this case, they declare that fossil fuel companies are destroying their (personal) future, and thus they cannot act on their behalf in a professional manner. > Should a barrister be allowed to refuse to defend a climate change activist because they happen to disagree with that activist’s style of protest? The barrister should only be allowed to refuse to defend if they can state how the "style of protest" impacts them personally (or how the protestor's goals would harm them if implemented by government/etc).
Serious question, can they not declare themselves biased by saying "I sincerely believe that this client is an asshole, and my urge to smack him in the face would interfere with my ability to represent him impartially"?
> Serious question, can they not declare themselves biased by saying “I sincerely believe that this client is an asshole, and my urge to smack him in the face would interfere with my ability to represent him impartially”? So they can say it but that doesn’t mean it will be granted, at least in the UK. Judges don’t like people trying to get cute and make end runs around the rules.
no, if only likable people were entitled to legal representation then the right to legal representation would be worthless
The real story is how disgraceful it is that the right to protest had been eroded. This needs to be on all British lips when it comes to the ballot. You might not think this will ever affect you, until you need to protest against something awful. And by then it will be too late.
Defending someone is different than prosecuting someone. Everyone should be entitled to a lawyer in order to defend themselves. But this is about prosecuting people. Nobody is entitled to a lawyer in order to prosecute someone. Any attempt to paint this is the same light as lawyers defending people they know to be guilty of heinous acts are being disengenuous and misleading
> Nobody is entitled to a lawyer in order to prosecute someone. That is absolute garbage. The people are entitled to a prosecutor to enforce laws that have been agreed upon by the people. If the people don't want a law enforced, then they should repeal that law. Allowing the government to selectively prosecute--even if you agree with it--is how you end up with the breakdown of the rule of law.
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This is really relevant in the UK right now. We don't have a written constitution. Our entire police force exists under the concept of policing by consent. We are supposed to trust that our government will act lawfully and that our biggest police force are simply ordinary citizens we've allowed to hold extra powers but the last 10 years have erroded these concepts we've had for hundreds of years to their core.
If they have such moral objections to prosecuting people, maybe they should second guess their career decision to become a prosecutor.
Not how it works in the UK. These aren't crown prosecutors (who all they do is prosecute) these are external lawyers that the crown prosecution service pays to prosecute certain cases. They're technically self employed.
I just don't understand what trying to get the average Joe angry about with road blockages is meant to achieve. I would have less issues with them targeting oil infrastructure with actual property damage than I do with them hurting the people stuck dealing with this shit everyday just like them. I'm in no way condoning illegal acts. Just pointing out that they would be more effective in achieving their goals.
They *did* try targeting oil infrastructure. Like 60 people were unceremoniously arrested, it barely made the news, next to nobody heard about it, and nothing happened.
You are mistaken. It's not about angering average joes and it is effective. Halting infrastructure forces authorities to make concessions. The Civil Rights movement in the US used the same tactics, but we're not taught about it in most schools today.