National Lawyers Guild Article Index for
National 		Website Links For
National 		 

Information About

National Lawyers Guild
  CATEGORIES ABOUT NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
   
american legal organizations
   
american bar associations
   
mccarthyism
   
1937 establishments
   
SHOPPER'S DELIGHT
 
Shop For:  
Department
Price Minimum:
Price Maximum:
      



According to a summary prepared by the New York University Tamiment Library: "Since its founding, the Guild has been instrumental in leading struggles for civil rights and civil liberties in numerous historic legal controversies." {Link without Title}

Michael Avery , a law professor at Suffolk University Law School , is the current President of the National Lawyers Guild. President-Elect Marjorie Cohn , a law professor at Thomas Jefferson School Of Law , will become President in October 2006.


POLITICS


The NLG opposes the PATRIOT Act , corporate globalization, the World Trade Organization , and has called for the adoption of "the Plan of Action from the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance."

The NLG supported attorney Lynne Stewart when she was charged and convicted of transmitting terrorist communications from prison by Omar Abdel-Rahman , her former client and mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. The NLG condemned Stewart's conviction. Others joined the NLG in this condemnation. Attorney Elaine Cassel noted that "Stewart never provided any financial support, weaponry -- or any other concrete aid -- for any act of terrorism. No act of terrorism is alleged to have resulted from her actions."[http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/cassel/20050214.html

Former NLG executive vice president Kit Gage replaced Sami Al-Arian as president of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF) after al-Arian's February 2003 arrest on charges of funding terrorists. Al-Arian has since pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.


HISTORY





According to Professor Peter Erlinder, the National Lawyers Guild was started in the 1930's by attorneys who supported the labor movement and Franklin D. Roosevelt 's New Deal , "in the face of determined ABA opposition."[http://www.nlgsf.org/pdf/history.pdf The National Lawyer's Guild was also the first national bar association to accept people of color as members. The ABA, at the time of the Guild's founding, refused to accept any people of color. http://www.nlg.org/about/aboutus.htm

During the Cold War , the NLG was an active affiliate of the International Association Of Democratic Lawyers . In 1978, the CIA described the NLG as "one of the most useful Communist front organizations at the service of the Soviet Communist Party, organization that has so consistently demonstrated its support of Moscow's foreign policy objectives, and is so tied in with other front organizations and the Communist press, that it is difficult for it to pretend that its judgments are fair or relevant to basic legal tenets."

According to NYU's Tamiment library:
:"In the 1950s, HUAC labeled the Guild as a "Communist-front" organization and issued a publication entitled "The National Lawyers Guild: Bulwark of the Communist Party." Attorney General Herbert Brownell asserted that the Guild was controlled by the Communist Party. After years of legal battles, the U. S. Supreme Court granted the Guild injunctive relief and ended its persecution at the hands of Congress and the Attorney General's office." {Link without Title}


MEMBERSHIP


Full membership in the NLG is open to and consists of lawyers, law students, legal workers and jailhouse lawyers. Prior to the 1960s, membership was only open to lawyers.

In the 1950s, the National Lawyers Guild refused to purse its members who were also members of the Communist Party. According to Chip Berlet , the majority of its current membership are not affiliated with communist groups, but that there are members who are cadres in communist organizations.

The political makeup of National Lawyers Guild members has been described as including cadres from Leninist , Trotskyist , Stalinist , and Maoist groups, as well as Marxists , Anarchists , Libertarians , progressive independents, and reluctant Democrats. The professional makeup of the National Lawyers Guild members inlcudes lawyers, legal workers, labor organizers, tribal sovereignty activists, civil liberties advocates, civil rights advocates, environmentalists, as well as many others. {Link without Title} .


FUNDING


The NLG has received funding from the Open Society Institute , the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation , and the Ford Foundation .


CRITICISM


Since its founding, the NLG has been the focus of much controversy and criticism, primarily from more conservative elements, but also from more liberal voices such as Sidney Hook . Central to these critics arguments is the claim that the organization is a communist front, or, more recently, a nest of terrorists. These claims have been repeatedly denied by the organization's leadership as “ Red-baiting ”.


Commonly cited Criticisms of the NLG


  • “While the Guild is not officially communist or Marxist, its membership, leadership, past internal struggles, and adopted stances consistently point to an organization whose underlying convictions could best be described as such.” (FrontPageMagazine.com; Jesse Rigby; 25 April 2003.)

  • “The ‘Guild’ promoted "liberation" (i.e. Marxist) movements or groups overseas in the 1970s, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Viet Cong, the African National Congress, pro-Soviet Angolan and Mozambican factions, the Puerto Rican FALN, and the Philippine New People’s Army, "the military wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines."

  • In 1950, the House Committee on Un-American Activities issued its "Report on the National Lawyers Guild: Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party," declaring the Guild an integral part of an overall Communist strategy aimed at weakening our nation’s defenses against the international Communist conspiracy." The report recommended that Guild members be barred from federal employment…

  • The NLG provides a vehicle for a class of lawyers who 'explode the law instead of buildings and people.’

  • --- quote: “These lawyers envy (or are grateful, depending on the level and degree of their cowardice) their clients’ willingness to act, and see the people that maybe they could be had they courage enough. They want to be terrorists but are too scared to be. Lawyering for terrorists becomes the next best thing…They explode the law instead of buildings.” (quote from Michael P. Tremoglie, author of ‘A Sense of Duty.’ .

  • NLG lawyers ‘facilitate the coming anti-capitalist revolution by weakening the law’s ability to function effectively against law-breaking radicals in a "legal struggle" that coincides alongside illegal, militant revolutionary activity.'

  • --- [full quote from: Notes on the National Lawyer’s Guild: “Prominent Guild member and Rutgers University School of Law Professor Arthur Kinoy argued that the role of the radical lawyer was to facilitate the coming anti-capitalist revolution by weakening the law’s ability to function effectively against law-breaking radicals.

  • Future Guild President Paul Harris even quoted Lenin, saying that a successful revolution required a "legal struggle" that coincided alongside illegal, militant revolutionary activity.

  • Doris Brin Walker, President of the Guild in 1970-71, remarked at a dinner held in her honor in 1981 that,"It is this commitment (to “the struggle”) which makes me so proud to be a member of the Communist Party,” and argued that "bourgeois democratic rights" had value only as a means of insulating the coming "Second American Revolution "from government inhibition.” (from: NLG: The Legal Fifth Column, by By Jesse Rigsby]



SOURCES

Doron Weinberg and Marty Fassler, A Historical Sketch of the National Lawyers Guild in American Politics, 1936-1968. National Lawyers Guild, n.d.


EXTERNAL LINKS