Patty Hearst, Mike Tyson, Jim Bakker......

Just like Free speech isn’t for popular speech, legal representation isn’t for only one segment of society. Alan is a great name, he loves the constitution and the law. Be more like Alan.

Wait......

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/11/alan-dershowitz-donald-trump-what-happened-218359


He isn't Trumps lawyer, he is providing legal advice.

This reminds me of the black civil defense lawyer that defended the Grand Dragon of the Texas Ku Klux Klan.

A Klansman's Black Lawyer, and a Principle
By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK

The New York Times Archives

The grand dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Michael Lowe, was thrilled when the American Civil Liberties Union agreed to defend him against the state's demands that he surrender the membership list of his Waco-based group. He hopped in his car and sped the four hours to a meeting here with his new A.C.L.U. lawyer, Anthony P. Griffin.
Mr. Lowe and his girlfriend were in the waiting room. "I saw this N.A.A.C.P. pin on the wall," Mr. Lowe recalls. "Then I started looking at the shelves, and there were these books on African and African-American history. So I turned to her and I said, 'Holy Moly, I think this guy's black.' "

Mr. Lowe, it turns out, is not the only one who was alarmed at the prospect of a black civil rights lawyer defending a Klan leader. Mr. Griffin, is also chief counsel to the Texas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Some of his N.A.A.C.P. colleagues were outraged when they found out that he was representing the Klan, and they demanded that he resign. He refused, and now the N.A.A.C.P.'s national leadership is considering whether to expel him.

The case is one for the strange-bedfellows file in the annals of American civil rights. But the man at the center of the controversy, who marched in an anti-Klan rally in East Texas a few weeks ago, says the case represents something more profound -- the supreme test of a lawyer's commitment to the Bill of Rights. Rights of 'People We Hate'
"The Klan says some vile and vicious and nasty and ugly things," the 38-year-old Mr. Griffin said. "But the Klan has a right to say them. If you ask whether they have a right to organize, to assemble, to free speech, those people we hate have such a right, and we just can't get around that. Because if you take away their rights, you take away my rights also."


Mr. Griffin said he is particularly dismayed that many of his N.A.A.C.P. colleagues are so angry with him. The benchmark principle in the Klan case, he said, is that the Government cannot compel private groups to divulge certain information about themselves -- a principle established by the Supreme Court in 1958, in a case involving attempts by the state of Alabama to wrest membership lists from the N.A.A.C.P.

"People forget," Mr. Griffin said. "N.A.A.C.P. members who are shouting and calling me every name from Judas to Clarence Thomas have got to remember that these were the arguments that were always used against every organization 'We' do not like. It was used against the N.A.A.C.P., it was used against the Black Panther Party."
Since its founding in the 1920's, the A.C.L.U. has often represented unpopular people and causes. In 1977, it defended the right of American Nazis to march in Skokie, a Jewish suburb of Chicago, and lost thousands of members. In 1987, it fought the State Department in defending the right of an agent of the Palestine Liberation Organization to maintain an information office in Washington. An A.C.L.U. spokesman said the organization, now about 300,000, has encountered no hostility over the Klan case. Allies in Legal Combat.

The case is not about money; Mr. Griffin volunteers his services to both the A.C.L.U. and the N.A.A.C.P.
Neither he nor Mr. Lowe seem to have any personal regard for each other. Asked whether they might keep in touch when this is all over, Mr. Griffin shot back, "That's not going to happen." But they have agreed to be allies in legal combat.
"The way I look at it, he has to do a good job for me," Mr. Lowe said in a telephone interview. He erupted in laughter when he said that until he met Mr. Griffin he had had no idea there even were black lawyers. "If he doesn't win, people are going to say, 'Yup, that's what you get for taking an African-American lawyer.' Everybody will know I got sold down the river by the A.C.L.U."

Mr. Griffin offered a similar explanation, with a similar undercurrent of scorn-drenched humor. "I told him, 'If I fail in my representation of you, then you can walk out of here and say: "Oh, he just messed up. That's how 'they' are." Humor and Anguish.

In a two-hour interview here, Mr. Griffin, a slight man with a style of dress that might be described as slightly muted "Miami Vice," evinced flashes of humor and anguish over his decision to represent Mr. Lowe. The road that brought them together was laid a few months ago, when the new executive director of the Texas chapter of the A.C.L.U., Jay Jacobson, consulted a list of volunteer lawyers.
Mr. Jacobson said he did not know at the time that Mr. Griffin was black, though he added that that would not have dissuaded him from making the call. Mr. Griffin, a Galveston lawyer who has handled dozens of race-discrimination and race-harassment cases, said he would have violated his conscience if he had turned down the request.
"In our role as lawyers, we're not God," he said. "We recognize rules and principles of law. And if lawyers backed off because someone is unpopular or hated, then our whole system of justice would just fall apart."

In the case against Mr. Lowe, the Texas Commission on Human Rights has been seeking a court order to compel him to turn over membership and mailing lists, financial documents and other records pertaining to the group, an offshoot of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a Klan branch based in Harrison, Ark. Spotlight on Vidor.


The commission says it wants the information to build a case against Klan members who have been protesting the court-ordered integration of housing projects in Vidor, an all-white town near the Louisiana border, and elsewhere in East Texas. The intimidation was enough to induce four blacks who had moved into the Vidor project this year to leave.
Mr. Griffin said the request was unconstitutional and that if the state had evidence of violence or intimidation, it should have indicted Mr. Lowe or other Klan members. He said he would feel no obligation to defend Mr. Lowe on criminal charges, that he was interested only in Mr. Lowe's rights to free speech and free assembly.
In a way, Mr. Griffin insisted, the issue is not the Klan's activity but the state's authority.

He recounted a recent conversation with a black man who "started telling me, well, he trusted the State of Texas on this." "I said, 'Whoa!' " Mr. Griffin recalled. "We've come a long way in this country when a black man from the Midwest tells a black man from the South that he trusts the State of Texas. And I said: 'I will be honest with you. I do not.' " Let's Not Talk Politics.

When they actually met here in Galveston, Mr. Griffin and Mr. Lowe did not exactly hit it off, but they saw eye to eye.
"I told Mr. Lowe this was not about me liking him or him liking me," Mr. Griffin said. "I said, 'This is about the First Amendment and your right to assemble and your right to free speech.' And I said that if we were to make this work in the attorney-client relationship, then we need not talk about politics and we need not talk about race, because we'd end up on the floor in a fight."

Mr. Lowe, a carpenter in Waco, said he thought about that for a few minutes and agreed to keep Mr. Griffin as his lawyer. Although he told a Klan rally last year that the solution to America's problems was to "put the Negroes back in the cotton fields," he said he never discounted Mr. Griffin's legal abilities.

"I'm not a white supremacist," Mr. Lowe said. "I'm a segregationist, but I'm not a white supremacist."
Still, even if the lawyer and the Klan leader came to an understanding, many of Mr. Griffin's fellow N.A.A.C.P. members were furious.

"I think it's terrible for him to do this," Raymond Scott, head of the Port Arthur, Tex., chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., thundered at a recent state board meeting. "You can't represent the N.A.A.C.P. and the Klan at the same time." Backed by Some Colleagues.

A few colleagues have supported him. "It's not a popular stand, but I think it's the right stand," said Oscar W. Woods Jr., president of the Dickinson-Bay Area, Tex., chapter of the N.A.A.C.P.

But the president of the state chapter, Gary Bledsoe, a longtime friend of Mr. Griffin's who is also an assistant state attorney general, said he thought Mr. Griffin's representation of the Klan leader was inappropriate.
"The whole design of his legal practice, of his legal career, has been to enfranchise people and break down doors," Mr. Bledsoe said. "I'm hoping that's more important to him than this principle that can be handled by another individual lawyer."

In what may or may not be deliberate buck-passing, the N.A.A.C.P. national leadership has asked Mr. Bledsoe to decide whether Mr. Griffin should be dismissed from his counsel's post, while Mr. Bledsoe said he needed to evaluate the leadership's opinion before deciding.

For now, the case goes forward with Mr. Griffin, still the Texas N.A.A.C.P.'s counsel, acting as the Klan leader's attorney. A ruling on the state's request is pending before a state court in Austin. Willing to Face Jail.

If Mr. Lowe is ordered to turn over the documents, he says he will refuse: "I'm willing to go to jail for my beliefs, just as Martin Luther King did 30 years ago."

Mr. Griffin said this case has much more to do with respect for the Constitution than for Mr. Lowe. "If we're going to apply the doctrines of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we can't cut it one way for one group and then cut it another way for a different group."

So you’re saying Trump isn’t entitled to what he considers sound legal advice? So if you don’t agree with him screw him? All along I was led to believe the left was tolerant of everyone.

Haven't met him in person, but I bet Alan is amongst the most tolerant people on these boards.

Trump deserves the best legal representation possible. I don't like him, but he IS my president. Alan makes sense, he is one of the greatest legal minds of a generation and he is a constitutional scholar. This isn't America. I want him out of office, but only by the right way, voting him out of office. BTW, I have not seen Alan defend Trump. What I have seen him do is defend the constitution, as every American should do.

Anthony, I don't think it a matter of tolerance. I think it is a matter of rights granted in the constitution. If we take rights away from president Trump we are all diminished. Gene's article was both fascinating and informative.

While this is an oversimplification it comes down to this. Are you willing to do what you know to be right even if it goes against everything you stand for?

Sometimes to win you have to lose.

But did he verify you are a tripod?

Frank, 2nd paragraph in #7 made LOL....pretty close to what I told Fiddler in text.

I have a hard time saying he has a level head on his shoulders because he voted for Hillary but at the same time he is not demanding Trump's throat be slit like frank and victor seem to demand all the time. A very confusing one this Dershowitz. I listen and respect but not sure I will go as far as "like" him.

Anthony, you are quite a creative mind reader.



Except you must have been reading someone else's mind.

I've been wondering too.
I simply have no recollection of being such a fervent hater of Trump...a throat slitter no less!
I disagree with him, I have very little respect for him as a person, I feel he is immoral and has spent a lifetime following his father's teachings by screwing "the suckers" who enter contracts with him...and more.
But I may have forgotten any posts that place me in such a partisan posture as accused.

and here I am defending his right to have the best defense available!

I thought he meant tittums when he said "Anthony"...

are you making fun of my learning disability?

let's just pretend I'm not here...

That's why I don't tell jokes at Liz Warren rallies.

Tail goes to Warren rallies?

I'd watch if we can get dr Phil to do a bailiff cameo...



Speaking of cameos, anyone from night court still alive?