“I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep,” Le said. “The system sucks, this job sucks, I am trying with every breath I have to get you what I need.”
I actually feel really sorry for the career attorneys who make the representations in court on the political apparatus’ behalf, whatever that may be and absentamy politicalas (Doubt? Look up the Hatch Act). The dedicated career-service professionals who carry out the job across administrations are some of the most dedicated and zealous people you can imagine.
I actually feel really sorry for the career attorneys who make the representations in court on the political apparatus’ behalf,
Don’t, they are 100% part of the problem.
We have no guidance or direction on what we need to do,
Wrong. You have plenty of guidance. It’s called “the law” and you went to school to learn how to understand it. If your people get instructions to violate the law, the instructions are invalid.
This is not complicated.
Well, the rules of professional conduct, which all attorneys are bound by, make it very clear what the client gets to decide versus what the attorney gets to decide. Essentially, the client gets to decide what the best conclusion is while the attorney decides the best means to get there (or, as close as can be) via the legal apparatus such that the other rules of professional conduct aren’t violated. Basically, the client pulls the trigger, the attorney furnishes the gun and aims it as best as can be for the client.
So, when there’s no guidance or direction, they’re saying the political establishment isn’t giving guidance on what the end result looks like. So, the attorney can’t proceed.
What do the rules of professional conduct say about a client who repeatedly and aggressively ignores the law and the orders of the court?
Not being sarcastic here, I’m honestly curious. The lawyer can’t control the client, so what do?
A client’s attorney is not there to help with enforcing the law; they are there to know the law and to represent the interests of the client to the court. The court decides what is to happen and whether there is any punishment. If the client is appearing in court because they are alleged to have violated a court order, the client needs to instruct their attorney whether to argue that they did not, in fact violate the court order, or that they did but that they have an excuse which should mitigate punishment, or that the court order is invalid, or whatever.
Without that instruction, the lawyer can’t do very much.
The problem is that all social institutions require some level of co-operation from the people subject to their judgements. Sure, if you’re a violent criminal the police might arrest you and drag you kicking and screaming from the dock, but it’s not practical to do that to an entire government department - or an entire company for example. Once the government decides it’s not going to respect the rule of law, they can get away with a lot before any consequences catch up with them, because in the meantime the court system has to continue to presume innocence, to permit the argument of mitigating circumstances, to presume good faith, and so on.
The long term problem is that lawyers are often not stupid, and they can see that working for this DOJ will have deleterious effects on their future careers when this stuff is over. I’ve heard that the Minneapolis office is down to 9 attorneys, and should be staffed for 50.
But the immediate problem here dates back to Rumsfeld v. Padilla*. In that case, the supreme court decided that habeas petitions must be filed in the district of actual, physical confinement. This created a race condition, where ICE is trying to get these people out of Minnesota as fast as possible, and these people’s lawyers are trying to file the lawsuits in Minnesota before their clients physically leave the state. ICE would prefer for these petitions to be filed in Texas, because the Texas district courts are a lot more favorable to them. The Minnesota lawyers don’t want to have to file in Texas, both because it’s a disadvantage to them, and because they aren’t admitted to practice in Texas, and it’s a big hassle to work around that.
Combine that with Trump v. CASA, and no one wants to try a habeas class action. So you have a crap ton of individualized habeas petitions, all over the same issue, which is ICE’s incorrect interpretation of federal immigration law. And in many, many of these cases, they properly got filed in Minnesota, but the prisoners got shipped to Texas anyway. The Minnesota judges are figuring out that all these cases are the same, and they’re making the decisions real fast now, and ICE is not keeping up, by design. It’s a total logistical cluster.
*Yes, it’s that Donald Rumsfeld, and that Jose Padilla, the dirty bomb guy.
Seems like this attorney is making it easy for the judge: rule against the government!
