The Green Bag
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able. It was noticeable that the defense rom the very beginning chose its tactics on the assumption that labor was on trial, and in their questioning of talesmen they insisted in inquiring into the views that each man held on tradeunionism and the open shop. An Ohio Disbarment
were, in their view, immune from criticism. . . . "Is it not easy to see that any asser tion that a court is derelict in its duty to the whole people is bound to lessen in some degree that respect of the people for their courts which is essential to their usefulness and authority? A charge that a judge shows himself to be unfit for his exalted position involves in some measure loss of regard for the place he occupies. Undoubtedly it is often necessary to make such a charge for the purpose of removing an unfaith ful officer, and the risk that judicial authority might be weakened thereby must be taken; but no lawyer, it seems to us, who possesses sufficient apprecia tion of what it involves to be an officer of a court of justice to deserve the confidence of a court and be useful thereby to his clients would venture to deliberately deceive and mislead the public as in this instance. "The right to criticise judicial candi dates, whether upon their judicial record or not, is not involved in this situation. The right respondent is contending for is the right to employ his professional standing in deliberate libel. In order to work out personal feeling and he claims the right, although to exercise it as he would involves a loss of respect for and a lowering of the proper in fluence of the very courts in which he undertakes to serve his clients. In our judgment, this conduct and the indif ference and unconcern still shown by respondent to its character exhibit a fatal lack of appreciation of the func tions and ethics of the office which he would hold at the bar."
In the Circuit and District Court of the United States for the Northern dis trict of Ohio, Charles A. Thachei was disbarred on five charges of professional misconduct in a decision rendered by Federal Judge Killits on Nov. 11. Thacher had already been disbarred by the Supreme Court of Ohio. The chief charge was that of criminal libel com mitted against Judge Morris of the Court of Common Pleas. The Court carefully distinguished between the right of faii criticism of judges and judicial candi dates, and the abuse of that right. In an extended opinion Judge Killits said : "That an elector, be he an attorney or not, has the right to refer to the record of a judge who is a candidate for argument against his re-election and may publicly criticise such candi date's fitness for the position is too plain to be disputed. The right to do so becomes a duty when in the judg ment of such elector the unfitness of the candidate may be shown from his record. In the exercise of this privi lege, the elector has the plain right to his own viewpoint, whereon he may stand with all the safeguards of free citizenship. This position is so palp ably consonant with our institutions that to advance it would seem to be supererogation, were it not for the fact that it has been assiduously mis Associations represented, to the distress of many credulous souls all over the United California. — In his annual address States that the Supreme Court of Ohio to the California Bar Association, which held to the contrary and that judges held its second annual meeting Nov.
