A quaint bit of Americana revived: Liberal law clinic defends Kari Lake

Kari Lake is the former Democrat who reinvented herself as a MAGA Republican and lost the Arizona gubernatorial race last year. Lake insists she won the race and alleges, among other things, that the recorder of Maricopa County, Stephen Richer, engaged in wrongdoing that helped her opponent.

Richer, a Republican, says that as a result of Lake’s attack, he and his family received death threats. He has sued Lake for defamation.

Arizona State University runs a law clinic that specializes in defending free speech. That clinic is representing Lake (as are other attorneys) in connection with her motion to dismiss the defamation case. The clinic argues on her behalf that the lawsuit must be tossed pursuant to Arizona’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) law, which allows defendants to file a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the case against them involves protected speech on a matter of public concern.

Lake’s case is perfect for the ASU free-speech clinic and its students. It involves a free speech issue; it is likely to set precedent; and the defendant is a high-profile figure.

But that last point is the rub. Lake is despised by liberals. Moreover, she has been critical of Arizona State itself, calling for the removal of its president.

This shouldn’t matter when it comes to the ASU free-speech clinic defending the free speech principle at issue in Lake’s case. But nowadays personal political preference trumps principle most of the time.

Thus, the ASU clinic is under fire for representing Lake. The Washington Post has the details in a story, the title of which — “Why is an Arizona State University law clinic defending Kari Lake?” — seems to signal that the clinic’s representation of Lake is problematic.

One ASU law graduate, a major financial backer of the school, complains that Lake is “the antithesis” of what the college teaches law school students to be. No doubt. But representing Lake in a free speech case does not teach students to be like her. If anything, it might encourage them to be like a Founding Father and second president of the United States (see below).

Nonetheless, this donor says that the clinic’s representation of Lake “doesn’t sit well” with all the alums he has spoken with. The Post says alums are “fuming.”

That’s probably true. Defending free speech when the speech gores one’s ox — or oxen one likes — has very little appeal these days.

In fact, we’ve reached the point where lawyers nominated for key government posts sometimes come under attack from the left for representing an unpopular business interest or signing a brief that takes a position with which they strongly disagree.

Some conservatives are no more tolerant than liberals of lawyers who defend clients whom they despise. Readers may recall the vitriol directed by conservatives at big law firms and their attorneys for defending terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay.

Granted, helping an American politician make a free speech defense to a defamation claim is different than helping a terrorist suspect argue that he was an innocent goatherd swept up by over-zealous Marines, and not an al-Qaeda member. But that terrorist has the right to make the defense and needs a lawyer to help him make it.

I wouldn’t enlist in that project, but neither would I rip a lawyer who chose to do so. When I took that position publicly, however, the pushback suggested that few conservatives agreed with me.

It wasn’t always thus. It used to be understood on both sides of the ideological spectrum that it’s okay, and maybe even commendable, for lawyers to represent clients with whom they are at odds ideologically. I remember when the American Civil Liberties Union was applauded for defending the right of American Nazis to parade in Skokie, Illinois — home to many Holocaust survivors.

In those days, we were taught that John Adams was heroic for defending the British troops who gunned down American patriots in the Boston Massacre. Yet now, defending a MAGA Republican in a speech case has people “fuming,”

We used to be a country in which it was not uncommon to hear people quote Voltaire (or a statement attributed to him) as follows: “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say.” I haven’t heard that one for a while.

America is worse off for it.