misrepresentation

More Revelations Regarding Elizabeth Warren’s Alleged Unauthorized Practice of Law, and Why This Matters

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Prof Jacobson, on his blog Legal Insurrection, is in line for an Ethics Hero award with his tenacity regarding Elizabeth Warren’s dubious qualifications to engage in the practice of law in  Massachusetts. The overwhelming reaction by his colleagues in legal academia, and mine in the legal ethics community, has been to airily dismiss his arguments as trivial, far-fetched and thinly disguised political warfare, since Jacobson is an unapologetic conservative blogger (and a distinguished one.) Meanwhile, the mainstream media has, I think it is fair to say, completely ignored the story.

Part of this is undoubtedly because of the ignorance of most journalists regarding the importance of the legal ethics rules in question. Part of it is probably due to the accurate assessment by editors and TV news producers that the average American’s brain would switch off right around the time the story mentions Massachusetts Rule of Professional Conduct Rule 5.5 Subsection (c), and will start wondering about how Blair from “The Facts of Life” is going to do on “Survivor.” And part of it, infuriatingly, is because most journalists are willing to forgo the ethical duties of their profession in order  to ensure that a Democrat wins back Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, and character be damned.

The rude brush off Prof. Jacobson is getting in this wagon-circling exercise is wrong in every way, and does injustice to every person and institution involved, including the Massachusetts legal establishment, the legal profession, ethical lawyers (which, believe it or not, the vast majority of them are), Senator Brown, the U.S. Senate, Massachusetts voters, and the American public. Bar associations across the country regularly punish ordinary lawyers who practice law without proper authorization, and there is a reason: a lawyer who won’t or can’t obey the most basic requirement of the profession—be sure you are practicing law legally—should not be trusted to handle the important transactions and controversies of their clients’ lives. Continue reading →

More From Prof. Jacobson On Elizabeth Warren’s Law License

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Uh, guys? Do you even care what really happened any more?

[ Original post here]

He has read various critiques of his analysis and allegations, and addresses them here. Jacobson also spoke with the much quoted General Counsel of the Mass Board of Bar Overseers, and confirmed that  Michael Fredrickson was not speaking officially or on behalf of the BBO, but rather giving his personal opinion.

For my part, I am dismayed, if not shocked, that the legal establishment, as well as legal ethicists who should know better, are letting their political biases dictate their analysis. It is true that Jacobson is an openly conservative blogger as well as a long-time critic of Warren, but he raises legitimate questions that deserve to be taken at face value, whatever their source. The fact Fredrickson, the BBO General Counsel, felt it necessary to personally defend Warren in the absence of sufficient facts strongly suggests a pro-Warren bias in the disciplinary system, where it really shouldn’t matter who breaks the rules, but whether or not they have. Similarly, over at the Legal Ethics Forum, legal ethics legend Monroe Freedman comments,

“It surprises me that so much commentary has been expended on such a relatively unimportant issue, which apparently was raised in the first place to embarrass a candidate for the Senate in a race that has matters at stake that could affect the future of the country.” Continue reading →

Well, There Goes Elizabeth Warren’s Legal Ethicist Vote! (UPDATED)

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

On the positive side for Prof. Warren, at least she may be able to  truthfully say that in Massachusetts, she’s more Cherokee than lawyer…

As thoroughly researched by Cornell Law Professor ( and conservative blogger) William Jacobson, Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren practiced law in her Cambridge, Massachusetts office for more than a decade without ever being licensed to practice law in that state. His findings are here. Continue reading →

Prosecutor, Prosecute Thyself!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The New York Times revealed this week that more than 300 district attorneys’ offices engage in a practice that is a clear violation of legal ethics and probably illegal as well.  These prosecutors partner with debt collecting agencies, which sent thousands of threatening letters to people across the country who have bounced checks, threatening them with harsh penalties and imprisonment. The letters bear the seal and signature of the local district attorney’s office, which gives them extra persuasive power.The companies also try to sell the check-writers  on budgeting and financial responsibility classes, and if they sign up, the district attorneys’ offices get a commission, in addition to a fee from the firms. It’s all in the interest of more efficient law enforcement, prosecutors argue; the partnerships free them to work on more serious crimes. Continue reading →

The Significance of Paul Ryan’s Marathon

/ Jack Marshall / 61 Comments

Interviewer : Are you still running?
Paul Ryan: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or [less].
Interviewer : But you did run marathons at some point?
Paul Ryan: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
Interviewer : I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
Paul Ryan: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
Interviewer : Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
Paul Ryan: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.

Thus did Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan describe his athletic exploits to ABC News reporter Hugh Hewett. But it was bad information: Runner’s World did some digging, and discovered that Ryan, intentionally or unintentionally, fictionally improved his best marathon time by an more than an hour. That “intentionally or unintentionally” is as important as the media and blog sleuths are making it out to be. Continue reading →

Supreme Court Headline Ethics: Our News Media, Misleading Rather Than Informing

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Supreme Court handed down its decision in Arizona v. United States today. This was the eagerly awaited case that addresses the issue of what the states can do to stem the tide of illegal immigration without encroaching on Federal authority, when Federal authority appears unwilling to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.

The decision was complex. Three provisions of the law were found to be preempted by Federal law and thus struck down, but they were provisions that have seldom been discussed in teh news media during the year-long controversy over the Arizona measure. The fourth provision covered in the opinion, the core of the law and the aspect of it that Democrats and illegal immigration advocates called “racial profiling,” was upheld, but with a caveat: if it was enforced in a fashion that violated Constitutional rights or raised preemption issues, it could be overturned later.

Meanwhile, after being smeared by the Obama Administration’s allies as politically-driven and without integrity, the split among the Justices defied the slander of its critics. Chief Justice Roberts joined the liberal wing of the Court to overturn the three provisions of the law.  Arch conservative and Bush appointee Justice Alito concurred with the banning of one of the three provisions. Hispanic Justice Sotomayor voted to uphold the papers-checking provision that the man who appointed her, President Obama, falsely described as allowing police to “harass” Hispanic citizens who were “eating ice cream” with their kids.

In short, like most Supreme Court decisions, the final opinions defied one-line analysis. This means that honest, ethical, objective and competent news sources shouldn’t and wouldn’t try to summarize the substance of the decision in a headline that was sure to mislead a reader who didn’t take the time to read the rest of the story (or, in truth, the actual opinions themselves, since the journalists who write stories about court cases generally do a terrible job). Yet here is sampling, gleaned from a Google search, of what the various publications, news networks and websites offered as headings. Judge for yourself how objective and fair they are: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Yesterday, Ethics Alarms discussed the deceptive editing of a Mitt Romney campaign video to make him look out of touch “with how real people live,” the attack line used so successful against President George H.W. Bush by Bill Clinton, after Bush had expressed amazement at grocery store price scanners. MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell cackled over the clip, which conveniently left out the point Romney was making. Naturally, other liberal flacks in the media picked up the theme, and cited the falsely edited segment.

Mitchell subsequently responded to complaints regarding the blatantly biased and unethical edit, and you can watch her response below: a huge shrug, and a dishonest “we didn’t have the chance” to play the whole thing (and instead decided to laugh at the Republican candidate for looking like a fool because we intentionally made him look like a fool.

Continue reading →

The News Media’s Election Year Ethics, Part 2: NBC Does A Breitbart

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

MSNBC serves up a lie sandwich for its viewers, and Jonathan Capehart chows down.

The Washington Post’s Op Ed page, courtesy of the paper’s liberal blogger Jonathan Capehart, was mocking Mitt Romney—he’s an out-of-touch rich guy, you know—for “waxing amazed at what he just saw or who he has just met as if he were a traveler in a strange and distant land for the first time.” Wrote Capehart:

“…Romney added to his parade of wonder with this beauty after visiting a well-known roadside convenience store chain in Pennsylvania. ‘Where do you get your hoagies here? Do you get them at WaWas? Is that where you get them? Well, I went to a place today called WaWas. You ever been to WaWas? Anybody been there? Some people don’t like . . . I know, I’m sorry. It’s a big state divide. But we went to WaWas . . . I was at a WaWas. I went to order a sandwich. You press a little touchtone key pad.… You touch this, touch this, touch this, go pay the cashier, and there’s your sandwich. It’s amazing!’

“What’s amazing is that Romney is seeking to lead a nation he appears to be visiting for the very first time. Pity he won’t settle for a t-shirt instead of the presidency as his souvenir” Continue reading →

Did Any Journalists Actually READ Obama’s Autobiography?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Today Rush Limbaugh was fuming over a Politico report that the President had admitted to biographer David Maranis that “Genevieve Cook,” the New York girlfriend depicted in his 1995 autobiography “Dreams From My Father,” was not a real person but a composite of several girlfriends. Rush’s point: the book was widely represented, by the President as well as others, as true. What else in the book is a lie?

Politico, however, did something novel: its reporters went to the book itself. They found that Obama had written, right up front, that some characters were composites, though he didn’t say which. Limbaugh’s larger point is still valid: if it contained fiction, and composite characters are that, the book is not reliable, and is not truly a work of non-fiction that can or should be trusted. Obama did not hide that fact, however…if anyone had been paying attention. Continue reading →

“Titanic” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

This is Titanic week, as all of you who don’t live in tunnels like prairie dogs must know. It has been a century since the sinking of the Great Unsinkable, with the deaths of 1500 souls including some of the great artistic, financial and industrial greats of the era. James Cameron’s 1997 film is also returning this week in 3-D, which means that the misconceptions, false accounts and outright misrepresentations the film drove into the public consciousness and popular culture will be strengthened once again. I think it would be ethical, on this centennial of the tragedy, for those in a position to do so to make a concerted effort to honor the victims and their families by honoring the truth. Thanks to Cameron, this is impossible. Continue reading →