The Courant is attacking Denise Merrill because she called herself an attorney in some campaign literature, but she’s not enough of an attorney to suit them. Seems she hasn’t practiced law for 30 years. Mind you, she hasn’t said she was actively practicing law, nor is the practice of law a part of the job of Secretary of State, the job for which she is running, something Susan Bysiewicz so recently proved. She has a law school degree and passed the California bar exam, and was a member of the California bar, but apparently that’s not enough for the Courant.
I’m a lawyer, practicing at the moment. So far as I’m concerned, for better or for worse, I’ll be a lawyer until they put me in my grave. It’s a curse I’ll have to live with. You can quibble about ethical rules designed to avoid misleading potential clients, but since Merrill hasn’t been seeking clients, it’s really a stretch to say that she’s doing anything unethical and an even bigger stretch to charge that she’s saying anything that’s untrue.
Currently, there are eleven members of Congress that call themselves physicians. One of them is Tom Coburn, which only goes to show that there’s at least one medical school out there that’s got some ‘splaining to do. Whether or not their licenses are active or inactive, they are not practicing medicine at the moment, but they’ve earned their stripes-even Coburn, apparently- and have the right to call themselves doctors, just like Merrill has the right to call herself a lawyer.
The article itself proves that Merrill has not been trying to mislead anyone:
When a Courant reporter researched Merrill’s background during the summer and asked about her status as a lawyer, she explained the California situation, and the newspaper published this accurate description: “Education: UConn, studied at San Francisco Law School, admitted to California bar.”
There’s an entry for Merrill on the State Bar of California website, where she is listed, with “Bar Number 85368′ by her name, along with her current Connecticut address in Mansfield Center and an “inactive” status designation. The website says that Merrill was admitted to the California bar May 1, 1979, at age 30, and that her status went “inactive” on Jan. 1, 1980.
Presumably the interview in the summer had nothing to do with the current story, so it appears that Merrill was the initial source for this startling revelation. Now that’s investigative journalism of the highest order.
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