Lawyers are saying Gov. Asa Hutchinson gave a substantive and mildly lofty address a couple of weeks ago to the convention of the Arkansas Bar Association in Hot Springs.
I wasn't there and couldn't obtain a video or audio recording. But Hutchinson was kind enough to retrieve his outline--he had no prepared text--and go over for me what he recalled saying.
I can begin to understand what the lawyers are talking about.
Asa is a veteran lawyer. He thinks like one. He says he is proud to be one.
Between political races and federal appointments, he has practiced law at a level some political detractors have acknowledged to be competent.
His training and experience as a lawyer is what mainly separates him from other politicians in his dynastic family who are more predictably and stridently conservative. Asa may not be any less conservative than they, but he seems more ... well, it's either moderate or circumspect, or a blend.
The first thing Hutchinson said--or quoted himself as having said--was that we need more lawyers in political office and public service. We have a much smaller lawyer contingent in the state Legislature than we had even a few years ago. Term limits led to legislators spending more interim time in Little Rock, which favored the kinds of self-employed persons who could run their businesses from a distance.
We need lawyers in politics and public service, Asa said, because they are trained to understand the law and abide by rules of civil conduct even as they disagree. And, he said, they are experienced in understanding that there always are other sides to whatever argument the client is giving them--sides they'd best learn and understand and even master.
Hutchinson said lawyers may have begun to shy from politics because of a relatively new dynamic: Their opponents, or, more likely, outside stealth groups, spend money to attack them in campaigns for having represented at some point in their careers an unattractive and unpopular client.
But, the governor explained, it's a lawyer's professional and ethical responsibility to represent all clients to the best of his or her ability and to help all persons get equity and justice.
Those kinds of unfair attacks have happened in Arkansas, which led Asa to say: "I don't recall anyone standing up and saying it's their professional duty as a lawyer to defend their colleagues in such instances. But that needs to happen."
In the recent contested race for the Arkansas Supreme Court, the losing candidate got attacked scandalously by the "dark money" of a secret outside group for once having taken a court appointment to file a federal appeal brief in behalf of a child pornographer. He was essentially and outrageously accused of not objecting to a little child pornography.
Hutchinson told the convention of his own experience a few years ago representing in federal court in Dallas a Muslim man named Mohammed who was accused of white-collar crimes. He said his client watched several potential jurors raise their hands during the selection process to say they didn't like Middle Eastern people because of terrorist attacks.
Hutchinson said his client despaired, but that he told him to have faith. He told him the eventual jury would rise to meet the principled standard of fairness.
And the man named Mohammed got acquitted of all charges.
That seems to be Asa's theme or philosophy: We all have specific failings, but we are generally good.
He made three other progressive points:
- The Bar Association needs to look seriously at some method of merit selection and appointment of state judges at the appellate level only. The Bar might even lead an initiated campaign. Local and district judges should remain elected, because they are close to their jurisdictions.
- The Bar needs to work with state policymakers on achieving equity in resources between publicly paid prosecuting attorneys and publicly paid public defenders.
- He takes seriously his gubernatorial responsibility and authority to issue pardons to correct errors or show mercy, and he encouraged lawyers to pepper his office with the most effectively argued cases for pardons they could make. He said he wouldn't grant them all, or even very many, but that he couldn't use his power appropriately if he didn't get good requests and the best and right opportunities.
One lawyer said it was a speech Hillary Clinton might have given. I don't know about that. Bill, maybe. Or Mike Beebe, for sure.
Perhaps it was quintessentially Asa.
Consider that he sought to sic the Bar Association on progressive tasks without actually trying to execute any of those tasks by his own initiative.
John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 06/28/2015