Counseling Justice: What Advice Could an Attorney have given to Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Edmund Pettus Bridge?

What should a lawyer have advised Martin Luther King, Jr. 50 years ago as he contemplated crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge?  Posing this question as we witness the anniversary of this act of defiance and in the shadow of Ferguson, Missouri raise compelling questions not only about civil disobedience in America, but only about the connection between law and ethics and the role that attorneys have in advising their clients and in participating in the promotion of social justice.  I confess at the start I do not have all the answers, but the issues here are vexing.
    The connection between law and ethics and civil disobedience has deep roots.  There is Antigone’s burying of her brothers in defiance of the orders of Creon the King.  Socrates challenged Athenian democracy when it ordered him to stop philosophizing.  Jesus and early Christians confronted the Romans as they practiced their faith. St Augustine once proclaimed: “Lex iniusta non est lex”–an unjust law is no law at all.  Natural law believers contend that human law must be based on some natural laws or rules of justice, and thinkers ranging from St Thomas, Thomas Becket, to Lon Fuller have argued that there is an inner morality to the law.  At times human civil law is simply unjust, raising a compelling case for civil disobedience.
    American history is replete with cases of civil disobedience.  Colonists dumping tea into Boston Harbor was as much a political statement about independence as it was a protest against a tax they did not like.  Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his taxes, opting for jail as a protest against slavery and the fugitive slave laws.  And civil rights protestors and those opposed to the Vietnam War too defied laws they deemed unjust. 
    As philosophers John Rawls and Robert Dworkin  argued, the core of civil disobedience is disobeying those laws which you feel are unjust–not simply any law to make your point.  It made sense for Rosa Parks to refuse to sit at the back of the bus in that she was directly challenging the law that discriminated against her.  The Greensboro Four in 1960 sitting at a Woolworth’s lunch counter and demanding service as a protest against segregation laws also defied the law they wished to challenge.  Even King’s march across Edmund Pettus bridge was a legitimate challenge to segregation laws as its defiance was integrally connected to the racial discrimination they were challenging in 1965.  In all these cases breaking the law was meant to protest that law while at the same time highlighting a bigger cause. 
    The purpose of civil disobedience is to bring attention to the  injustice of the law with the goal being to bring about reform.  Because that is the goal, some contend civil disobedience should not be prosecuted.  Whether that is the case can be debated.  Will the civil disobedience be successful and is the cause is just are only a couple of issues to ask.  Will breaking the law send a sufficient message to the majority to change the laws, or will the civil disobedience lose part of its potency by knowledge that one is not risking prosecution, are tactical and political questions that do not lend themselves to simple answers.
    But what if King had come to an attorney in 1965 and asked whether he should break that law.  What should an attorney have done or said?  The contemporary ethical rules for lawyers known as the Rules of Professional Conduct were not in effect then, but assume they were, what do they permit?  The preamble admonishes attorneys to be zealous advocates for their clients while also recognizing that they have “a special responsibility for the quality of justice.”  One hopes that in advising a client one also promotes justice.  Moreover, Rules 1.16 and 3.3, as well as 1.6 collectively  and individually prohibit an attorney from assisting or advising a client to break the law.  Generally a lawyer’s first obligation is to counsel a client to conform to the law–to obey.  But lawyers may advise clients that a law may be unconstitutional but nonetheless also inform the client about the risks of challenging the law.  Similarly, a lawyer may advise a client contemplating civil disobedience about the consequences of disobeying the law and still represent the client afterwards.  Given this, there would have been no problem for an attorney advising King on his options, including what might happen if he crossed the bridge.
    But there are two additional issues here.  Should an attorney have told King to defy the law and march, and what about if the attorney marched with him?  These are tough matters of conscience and ethics.  On the one hand if the attorney thinks the segregation laws (or in this case an injunction) is unjust, should the lawyer counsel breaking the law?  One answer is that if the attorney truly believes the laws are simply unjust (but not illegal) it would be unethical from a lawyer’s ethics point of view to advise breaking the law.  More importantly, an attorney taking this position may not be acting as a zealous advocate for the client.  Such attorneys may be zealously advocating for a cause or they may be pressing their moral views upon a client, but they are not zealous advocates for their  clients.  But even if the moral views of the client and the attorney align, it may be the case that the attorney is no longer able to act primarily with the best interests of the client in mind–there may be a conflict of interest.  In the end, it is not about the attorney’s conscience when advising a client.  If an attorney believes that the law is unethical and wishes to civilly disobey, he or she may do so and cross the bridge, but  at that point one probably should no longer be advising King as an attorney.  The attorney is now a participant in the disobedience, not advising in the matter.  It may be difficult to cross the bridge and advise King at the same time.
    Conversely, is it ethical to advise clients to obey unjust laws?  Would it be wrong to advise disobeying laws connected with supporting an unjust society?  Should an attorney have advised Thoreau to pay his taxes?  For John Brown to raid Harper’s Ferry? Or today, would it be appropriate for an attorney to tell  protestors to block clinics because abortion is wrong?  Is it okay to advise illegal protests against Ferguson and racial discrimination in America?  No one says that lawyers should be indifferent justice; they should do their best to promote it.   But these issues raise a difficult problem of reconciling ethical rules that attorneys are supposed to follow with obedience to the law and ultimately the principles of a just society.  I am not sure what I would have done as  an attorney advising King in 1965.  I hope I would have gotten it right but it is not clear exactly what getting it right actually means.

Members of Congress have an ethical and legal duty to fund the government

The political thinker and Irish Member to the British Parliament Edmund Burke once famously declared the duty of a legislator as between being a delegate and doing what constituents demand versus serving them by exercising one's best judgment.  But there is at least another duty that legislators have and that is a legal if not an ethical duty to comply with their own laws and to support the government they were elected to serve.

               The importance of stating this duty asks under what occasions, if any, are members of Congress permitted to disobey a law as a matter of conscience?  This is the question posed by House Republican efforts to repeatedly defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) and force a partial governmental shutdown.  In effect, do legislators have a right to disobey and obstruct a law they do not support?  Do they have a right to civil disobedience?  While in general civil disobedience is an important act to test the constitutional values and justice of a society, this is not an option open to members of Congress, at least on this issue and for the reasons Republicans give.

               The relationship between law, justice, and civil disobedience has a long history in the west.  Sophocles' Antigone tells the story of a woman who buried a deceased brother in defiance of the king Creon who ordered her not to do so.  Her decision to defy was premised, in part, upon  concepts of justice and religious grounds, contending that her duty to disobey rested upon a higher law from the gods.  Similarly, Socrates’ trial and defense of his philosophizing invoked a duty to a higher law that justified defiance of human law. St. Augustine was one of the first Christian writers to argue that human laws that are unjust really are not laws.  St. Thomas defined a legal tradition that declared that human law must conform with God’s natural laws of justice, inspiring a generation of political theorists including John Locke who articulated a right to revolution against governments that violated natural rights and laws.  In all of these cases, civil disobedience invoked as an appeal to some higher law or rules of justice that dictated defiance of the law.

               The United States as a country is a product of civil disobedience.  The dumping of tea into the Boston Harbor in 1773 and the 1776 Declaration of Independence were acts of civil disobedience, providing the case for why some laws were unjust and should be ignored or defied.  The abolitionists,  including Henry David Thoreau and John Brown, so disliked slavery or the Fugitive Slave Act that defiance, going to jail, and even violence were viewed as proper acts of conscience.  And then of course Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the many African-Americans who protested segregation by sitting at “Whites' only” lunch counters or who crossed the Edmund Pettus bridge also felt civil disobedience was an appropriate stance to take to challenge laws that thought were wrong.  In all of these cases, appeals to personal conscience, personal morality, or to religious or other values dictated the choices of individuals to defy the law.  But the question is, do legislators have this same right?  May they defy a law they do not support?  Do they have a right to shut down the government?

               Think first about the right of individuals to engage in civil disobedience.  Political theorist John Rawls argued that civil disobedience has a constitutional role in a just society.  It is an appeal to the shared values of a community, aiming to persuade a majority that it is wrong.   Civil disobedience is not an appeal to political expediency or self-interest. It is not a legal right, but an appeal to justice.  Citizens have a general duty to obey the law, but in some cases some feel that the law is wrong and must defy it.  But they do so first with the aim of changing the law and second, cognizant that they face legal retribution for their defiance.  The act of civil disobedience has the potential to change the law because one is willing to go to jail or be punished for one’s act.

               But private citizens are different than legislators and they may have less right to defy laws they dislike.  First, members of Congress not only have a general duty to obey the laws they have authored, but they have taken an oath of office to obey the law.  This current oath commands members of Congress to defend Constitution, accepting this obligation freely, without reservation, and with the help of God.  Such an oath imposes on them a special duty-above and beyond that of a private citizen—to obey laws.  Does that mean congressional members have no recourse to object to laws they dislike?  Of course not.  They can move to repeal the laws they dislike.  House Republicans have tried that 40 plus times when it comes to Obamacare.  The power to legislate and change laws gives them a tool that mere citizens lack.  While one can question the political reasons or wisdom for repeated votes to repeal the ACA, do that is the right of legislators.

 But there is a difference between trying to repeal a law one does not like and defying it.  This is what House Republicans are doing in seeking to defund Obamacare, pushing the government in to a partial shutdown, and perhaps risking a default on America’s debts come October 17.  For good or bad Obamacare is the law of the land—it has not been repealed and it has not been declared unconstitutional.  Members of Congress are under a legal and moral duty to fund laws and programs that they have authorized, even if personally they voted against the laws.  One of the most basic principles of American democracy is majority rule.  Majorities get their way so long as they do not violate the constitutional rights of minorities.  Majority rule settles decisions until such time as a majority reaches a different conclusion. Similarly, majority rule is the rule of Congress.  At some point votes and elections have settled issues and it is time to move on.  This is the case with Obamacare.

Moreover, Republican efforts to defund Obamacare are not premised upon shared constitutional values or principles of justice.  The decision is based on dislike of the law, Obama, or government in general.  Or it is based on political expediency--appealing to what their constituents want or what will appeal to their electoral base--and not on a sense of higher justice.  Or perhaps it is based on  private conscience or belief that the law is wrong.  All these may be great reasons to seek to repeal the law, but they are not proper grounds for refusing to perform one's specific duty to support a law that has been legally adopted in a democratic society.  Contrary to what she make think, Congresswoman Michele is not Rosa Parks--her reasons for opposing Obamacare are not based on appeals to justice and higher laws, but instead on personal and political expediency.

In general members of Congress do not have a right of civil disobedience to oppose laws they have a duty to uphold.  They are not like ordinary citizens exercising the right of civil disobedience.  Finally, legislators who object to the ACA do not have a right to defund Obamacare and hurt the rest of the country with a government shutdown.  In doing that they are not facing legal retribution for their actions as would ordinary citizens face by defying the law.  These members of Congress are taking a political stand, not an ethical one, and they do not have the right to do that.