The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is a progressive public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers, in the United States. The group was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association (ABA) in protest of that organization's exclusionary membership practices and conservative political orientation. They were the first US bar association to allow the admission of minorities to their ranks. The group sought to bring more lawyers closer to the labor movement and progressive political activities (e.g., the Farmer-Labor Party movement), to support and encourage lawyers otherwise "isolated and discouraged," and to help create a "united front" against Fascism.
The group declares itself to be "dedicated to the need for basic and progressive change in the structure of our political and economic system . . . to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests." During the McCarthy era the organisation was accused of operating as a communist front group.
Video National Lawyers Guild
History
On December 1, 1936, nearly 25 East Coast lawyers met at the City Club of New York to discuss creation of a new group counter to the conservative American Bar Association. United Auto Workers general counsel Maurice Sugar was instrumental in calling the meeting. Lawyers present included: Morris Erst, Robert Silberstein and Mortimer Reimer of the Lawyers Security League, ACLU attorney Osmond Fraenkel, IJA-US founder Carol Weiss King, and union lawyer Henry Sacher. The group agreed on an aim to united "all lawyers who regarded adjustments to new conditions as more important than the veneration of precedent, who recognize the importance of safeguarding and extending the right of workers and farmers upon whom the welfare of the entire nation depends, of maintaining our civil rights and liberties and our democratic institutions." The group voted Frank P. Walsh, member of the New York State Power Authority. Within two weeks, Guild chapters had already formed in New York City, Newark, Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, St. Louis, and Chicago.
The National Lawyers Guild was founded in Washington, D.C. at a convention held from February 19-22, 1937 at the Hotel Washington. Individuals particularly instrumental in the creation of the organization included Harold I. Cammer and George Wagman Fish, among others. Other founding members included Frank P. Walsh, Albert Wald, Morris Ernst, Jerome Frank, as well as the general counsels of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Another co-founder was Abraham Unger of New York City. The first Executive Secretary of the organization was Mortimer Riemer.
According to Victor Rabinowitz, head of the NLG in the 1960s, the original membership of the organization came from two camps -- established liberal attorneys with a labor-oriented perspective and "a militant segment of the bar, mostly young and sometimes radical." The National Lawyers Guild was the nation's first racially integrated bar association. Among the NLG's first causes was its support of President Roosevelt's New Deal, which was opposed by the American Bar Association (ABA). NLG assisted the emerging labor movement, and opposed the racial segregation policies in the ABA and in society in general. Following the Nazis' invasion of the Soviet Union, the Guild gave its support to President Roosevelt's wartime policies, including that of Japanese American internment.
According to historian Harvey Klehr, the NLG was allied with the Communist Party; in the 1930s a significant number of NLG founders had been members or fellow travelers of the Communist Party USA, including Riemer and Joseph Brodsky of the CP's International Labor Defense auxiliary. During the McCarthy era, the NLG was accused by Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. as well as the House Un-American Activities Committee of being a Communist front organization. Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly tried to get successive Attorneys General to declare the NLG a "subversive organization," but without success.
In 1944 the Special House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) chaired by Texas Congressman Martin Dies Jr. published a brief history of the NLG in its massive and controversial "Appendix -- Part IX" cataloging so-called "Communist Front Organizations" and their supporters. This report charged that the NLG, despite being promoted as a "professional organization of liberal lawyers" had proven itself by its actions to be "just one more highly deceptive Communist-operated front organization, primarily intended to serve the interests of the Communist Party of the United States..."
The 1944 HUAC history asserted that the NLG was merely "a streamlined edition of the International Juridical Organization", a Communist Party mass organization established in 1931. The document charged that "the National Lawyers Guild has faithfully followed the line of the Communist Party on numerous issues and has proven itself an important bulwark in defense of that party, its members, and organizations under its control." Particularly damning in HUAC's eyes was the NLG's reversal of position on the war in Europe after the June 22, 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union by the forces of Nazi Germany, with an October resolution by the previously anti-war organization offering "unlimited support to all measures necessary to the defeat of Hitlerism" and supporting the Roosevelt administration's policy of "'all out aid' and full collaboration with Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and other nations resisting Fascist aggression."
The Guild was singled out again in a 1950 publication of the now permanent House Un-American Activities Committee entitled Report on the National Lawyers Guild: Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party. This document accused the NLG of playing a part in "an overall Communist strategy aimed at weakening our nation's defenses against the international Communist conspiracy." The report advocated that Guild members be barred from federal employment in light of the organization's alleged subversive character. In 1958, and again in 1974, the US Government determined that the NLG could not be declared subversive. In 1989 the FBI admitted its continued efforts to investigate and disrupt the NLG in the period from 1940 to 1975.
In 2005, NLG member Lynne Stewart was found guilty of violating Special Administrative Measures imposed on her client Omar Abdel Rahman and was sentenced in 2010 to 10 years in prison. The NLG mounted a campaign on her behalf.
In 2011 lawyers associated with the NLG became involved in the Occupy movement in the United States, making use of temporary restraining orders on behalf of encamped activists in an effort to forestall the forced dispersal of their sites by law enforcement. Charging that the Occupy movement was the subject of a "coordinated national crackdown," NLG lawyers filed actions in Boston, New York City, San Diego, Fort Myers, Atlanta, and other cities seeking the temporary prohibition of site removal efforts.
Maps National Lawyers Guild
Structure
Past guild presidents have included Dobby Walker (the first female President of the NLG, first serving in 1970 and member of the 1972 "Dream Team" that successfully defended Angela Davis using innovative litigation techniques that are now commonplace), Marjorie Cohn (a law professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and author), and Azadeh Shahshahani (the first woman of color president of the NLG and a human rights attorney who defends the rights of immigrants and Muslims in the US South). Heidi Boghosian served as its Executive Director for 15 years, from 1999 to 2014.
Membership and structure
Full membership in the NLG is open to lawyers, law students, legal workers (including legal secretaries, legal investigators, paralegals, law collective members, and jailhouse lawyers). Prior to the 1972 NLG National Convention, held in Boulder, Colorado, membership was only open to lawyers. Members now include labor organizers, tribal sovereignty activists, civil liberties advocates, civil rights advocates, environmentalists, and G.I. rights counselors.
As of 2003, the NLG consisted of 42 local chapters grouped in 9 geographic regions.
Pooja Gehi is the current Executive Director.
Program and committees
The NLG web site lists the following aims:
- to eliminate racism;
- to safeguard and strengthen the rights of workers, women, farmers and minority groups, upon whom the welfare of the entire nation depends;
- to maintain and protect our civil rights and liberties in the face of persistent attacks upon them;
- to use the law as an instrument for the protection of the people, rather than for their repression.
The NLG has historically been noted for championing of progressive and left-wing causes.
Currently, the NLG opposes the PATRIOT Act, corporate globalization, the World Trade Organization, and has called for the adoption of "the Plan of Action from the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance." The NLG also helps to train and provide legal observers for political demonstrations. The NLG has supported Palestinian rights and a number of other causes. With the Center for Constitutional Rights, the NLG published a revised Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook, and annually distributes thousands of copies to inmates seeking legal information and resources.
In November 2007, the NLG passed a resolution calling for the impeachment of then President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Most of the work of the Guild is done by committees, project and task forces. These include
Funding
The NLG is a dues-paying membership organization, with income-based sliding scale rates ranging from $15 to $500 per annum used in 2011.
Journals
The first journal of the NLG was the National Lawyers Guild Quarterly, first issued in December 1937 and terminated in July 1940. This was succeeded in October 1940 by a new quarterly called Lawyers Guild Review, which was published continuously through 1960. The publication's editorial office was moved to Los Angeles and its name was briefly changed from 1961 through 1964 to Law in Transition, followed by a final change in 1965 to Guild Practitioner.
See also
- International Labor Defense
- International Juridical Association
- Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
References
Sources
- Martin Dies (chairman of Special Committee on Un-American Activities). "145. National Lawyers Guild", pp. 1267-1279 in Appendix -- Part IX: Communist Front Organizations, with Special Reference to the National Citizens Political Action Committee (Fourth Section and Fifth Section: Pages 1049-1648) of Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy-Eighth Congress, Second Session, on H. Res. 282. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1944
- Ann Fagan Ginger and Eugene M. Tobin (editors); Ramsey Clark (foreword). The National Lawyers Guild: From Roosevelt Through Reagan. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. ISBN 0877224889
- Victor Rabinowitz and Tim Ledwith (editors). A History of the National Lawyers Guild: 1937-1987. New York: National Lawyers Guild, 1987
- John S. Wood (chair of the House Un-American Activities Committee). Report on the National Lawyers Guild: Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party (Report No. 3123 of the 81st Congress, 2nd Session, of the House of Representatives). Washington, DC: Committee on Un-American Activities of the U. S. House of Representatives, 1950.
Further reading
- Dyzenhaus, David; Moreau, Sophia Reibetanz; and Ripstein, Arthur. Law and Morality: Readings in Legal Philosophy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.
- Finan, Christopher M. From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 2007.
- Heard, Alex. The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South. New York: Harper, 2010.
- Lobel, Jules. Success Without Victory: Lost Legal Battles and the Long Road to Justice in America. New York: New York University Press, 2003.
- Swidler, Joseph Charles and Henderson, A. Scott. Power and the Public Interest: The Memoirs of Joseph C. Swidler. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002.
External links
- National Lawyers Guild website, www.nlg.org/
- Finding Aid for the Archives of the National Lawyers Guild Records, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, Bobst Library, New York University, New York City.
- Preliminary Inventory of the National Lawyers Guild Records, 1936-1999 at The Bancroft Library
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