NC lawyers groups’ silence on rulings in Griffin voter case is cowardly | Opinion

I’m still flummoxed by the North Carolina Supreme Court ruling, two weeks ago, in the Jefferson Griffin case. I’ve been studying appellate decisions for 50 years. I’ve never seen such overt and unembarrassed lawlessness. The Republican-majority determination didn’t even try to explain the bold contradictions of its dishonesty. No attempt, or even façade, of lawyering was proffered. The usurping judges sounded more like Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts than interpreters of the Constitution. One hopes the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rides to the rescue.

Ironically, for such a blatantly political ruling, justices Paul Newby, Philip Berger, Jr, Tamara Barringer and Trey Allen have opened themselves broadly to their own defeat at the polls. Even a modestly articulate and funded Democratic challenger should be able to lay waste to them on the embrace of Griffin alone. And the courageous dissenting stance of Justice Richard Dietz, I fear, will likely show that no room remains in the Republican Party for such demonstrably ethical behavior.

Another ethical lapse has, by now, become difficult to ignore — the cold and cowardly silence of the organized bar, the North Carolina Bar Association and the (regulatory) North Carolina State Bar. There has been much talk on my home campus of the absence of UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee Roberts and UNC system President Peter Hans from the massive “Call for Constructive Engagement” petition signed by “the leaders” of America’s colleges and universities — objecting to the “political interference now endangering American higher education.” But no one expects they will bite the Republican hand that feeds them. The legal profession is supposed to be different.

In 2023, News & Observer opinion writer Ned Barnett wrote an important piece noting that “North Carolina courts have become politicized at the behest of the Republican-controlled legislature and with the the passive or overt cooperation of Republican judges and justices.” What was “striking” to Barnett was “the legal community’s lack of protest.” The North Carolina Bar Association, law school deans and leaders of prominent law firms — the organized bar, he concluded, “have been largely silent.” In the intervening year and a half, things have markedly worsened, including now, the brazen and unlawful attempt to steal a Supreme Court election. Still, mum’s the word.

Mr. Barnett objected that “lawyers take an oath to support, maintain and defend the state and federal constitutions,” and that wasn’t happening. But there’s more. The preamble to the American Bar Association (ABA) Model Rules of Professional Conduct outlines lawyers’ obligations as “public citizens.” Such responsibilities arise because “legal institutions in a constitutional democracy depend on popular participation and support to maintain their authority.”

Conservative jurist Michael Luttig, co-chair of the ABA Task Force for American Democracy, has argued, more pointedly, that American democracy and the rule of law are in peril and lawyers are “uniquely responsible and obligated to stand up” for them.

Barnett conceded that silence from the legal community is “understandable.” Lawyers are “loath to get on the wrong side of judges. And law professors and deans at public universities worry their objections could lead to budget cuts.” And well they could.

But history can also be telling. It’s hard to resist comparing the N.C. Bar Association’s passionate statements in 1954 and 1955 condemning the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. John Hall, president of the NC Bar, boasted in his inaugural address that “our state will never abandon segregation; the mixing of the races cannot be accomplished.” Vice-President Horace Stacey demanded that Tar Heels “protect their racial integrity and maintain their separate schools.” Their speeches were published on the front pages of the state’s bar journal and distributed across Carolina.

North Carolina lawyers have been moved, in the past, to speak up to wound constitutional democracy. Maybe now they could speak out to support it.

This story was originally published April 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "NC lawyers groups’ silence on rulings in Griffin voter case is cowardly | Opinion."