I am absolutely in agreement with Groucho Marx. As a general principle ” I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member”.
Case in point: the Connecticut Bar Association. I joined under semi-duress, and they allowed me in, no questions asked. (Well, one question asked: “Where’s the money?”) But they didn’t stop there. That decision looks good next to this one, that found it’s way into my in-box this morning:
Kenneth W. Starr, Duane and Kelly Roberts Dean and Professor of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law, will be the featured speaker at the Third Annual CBA/YLS Distinguished Speaker Luncheon at 12:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 22, at The Hartford Club in Hartford.
It’s bad enough that they’ll let me be a member, but they’re going to either pay Ken Starr to give a speech or allow him to inflict himself on members gratis. Further proof, if any were needed, that this is an organization with a serious lack of judgment. I would henceforth resign from my committee memberships, were I a member of any committees. I would refuse to attend CBA functions, but alas, that is an empty threat, as I have never done so in the past. Little remains but to tender my resignation, which I intend to do as soon as I work up the energy to do so.
We live in strange times. In Missouri, Washington University, an institution that presumably sets some store in the life of the mind, is about to award an honorary degree to Phyllis Schlafly, a woman who has dedicated her life to the proposition that women are the intellectual inferiors of men, and that in any case the intellectual life is not worth living. Here in Connecticut our Bar Association chooses to honor a man who has shown a contempt for law- a man who led a vindictive partisan witch hunt. Is it so impossible to find someone who has really brought honor to the legal profession? How about this man? Or does partisan warfare bring more honor to our profession than opposing torture?
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