U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the DOJ have enabled the Bush Administration to perpetrate illegal surveillance upon American citizens without retribution and have conducted illegal and covert political sabotage aimed at stealing elections while refusing to enforce Congressional contempt charges against Administration officials. Gonzales and the DOJ have shown a total lack of respect for the highest law of the land, our U.S. Constitution. By example the DOJ has shown the American people and in particular attorneys, magistrates, and judges that nothing is illegal if you’re not prosecuted and that we are no longer a nation unilaterally ruled by law. Individuals in power are somehow exempt from the law of the land and think that they are above it.
While the attention of the Nation is focused on the National scene, most Americans are seemingly unconcerned about widespread attorney corruption at the grass roots level in America today. The truth is that attorney corruption today is so prevalent that it has become a cancer in our society destroying the very promise of life for many of our citizens. Attorneys in our courts, judiciary, legislatures, health industry, and other private corporations have made a mockery of justice and life in America for all but the privileged few. If you look at virtually every public scandal whether it is insider trading, insurance company fraud, threatening and illegal prosecutions, commingling of funds, stockholder swindling, or government corruption, corrupt attorneys are invariably at the core of the problem.
The primary cause of widespread attorney misconduct is the fact that state attorney discipline systems across the Country are illusory and ineffectual. A couple of years ago HALT, a non-profit legal reform group in Washington, D.C., performed a comprehensive evaluation of attorney discipline systems in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Thirty-nine states received a grade of C- or lower, twenty-one states received a grade of D- or lower, and two states (Pennsylvania and North Carolina) failed completely. In a more recent 2006 investigation, HALT noted that Colorado’s Attorney Regulation Counsel for example "failed to investigate more than eighty-six percent (86%) of the complaints received against lawyers, according to the American Bar Association's latest figures." As a result, Colorado received a D- grade in the category of Adequacy of Discipline Imposed. It is worth noting that in that same State, Colorado’s Commission on Judicial Discipline has not unseated a single judge since the Commission was founded forty-one years ago.
Just as the Congress has failed to hold Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the DOJ accountable for their actions, state attorney discipline systems are failing to protect the American public from corrupt private attorneys as well. As a result, only the most publicized unethical or criminal actions of attorneys result in any disciplinary action being taken and often that involves a private and censored reprimand. Similarly, the lack of transparency of investigations by these failing attorney discipline systems has resulted in the lack of any meaningful oversight by the citizenry.
America needs to hold the Bush Administration accountable but should not ignore the problem of attorney, magistrate, and judicial regulation nationwide as this problem has seeped into the very marrow of our lives. Citizens need to pressure Congress and their State Legislatures to demand better regulation and accountability of the legal profession in America, if not for the public, then for the ethical attorneys, magistrates, and judges who must be tired of being slandered by association. It’s time to restore public confidence and trust in the legal profession.