California Bar May Consider Campus Protests in Moral Character Review For Licensing Lawyers
“when determining if they have the moral character to become licensed attorneys”
Isn’t this a policy that should already be in place everywhere?
Reuters reports:
Calif bar considers campus protests in moral character review for lawyer licensing
Bar admission authorities in California will consider applicants’ participation in campus protests on an “individual basis” during the moral character process, following an internal review.
A State Bar of California working group, which took up the issue of whether and how the bar should continue to weigh applicants’ participation in campus protests when determining if they have the moral character to become licensed attorneys, said that evaluators must be careful to exclude protected political speech or expression, according to a memo, opens new tab slated to be discussed by the state bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners on Friday.
The working group declined to endorse any blanket policies regarding campus protest involvement, instead concluding that moral character reviews should look at the “specific facts relevant to the individual applicant” and take into account relevant state and federal precedent.
The state bar handles lawyer licensing in California, which has the nation’s second largest population of attorneys behind New York. California licenses up to 6,000 law graduates each year. In addition to passing the bar exam, aspiring lawyers must undergo a moral character review — a process similar to an extensive background check — before they can practice.
Brandon Stallings, chair of the state bar’s Board of Trustees, in May directed staff to examine how it weighs participation in campus protests by bar applicants following a wave of unrest related to the war in Gaza that began in October 2023.
In April, for example, pro-Palestinian students disrupted a dinner Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky hosted for graduating students at his home — prompting questions over whether the students had crossed a line.
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Comments
Unless you make it retroactive, it’s just an equal protection violation.
Test: Apply the test to Hillary Clinton, Ben Crump, and Marc Elias — if they’re still lawyers afterward, you got it wrong.
You very obviously did not read the article
“A State Bar of California working group, which took up the issue of whether and how the bar should continue to weigh applicants’ participation in campus protests when determining if they have the moral character to become licensed attorneys, said that evaluators must be careful to exclude protected political speech or expression, according to a memo, opens new tab slated to be discussed by the state bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners on Friday.”
In other words the disgusting politics on display is not under consideration it is the actions that went beyond it.
So you could take a swastica there and sieg heil all day and the state bar will not consider that.
However the people who banned Jews from campus, screamed at Jews, chased Jews, locked Jews in enclosed spaces, occupied buildings, destroyed public property, camped out on public property that did not belong to them without permission of the property owner, assaulted girls and had to be stopped by local Persian Jews etc etc etc those actions are what will be considered.
The individual case by case basis is in order to just focus on those behaviors without going after lawful and protected speech.
Having appalling politics is not what they are considering, and none of the lawyers you listed would be found ineligible by them.
You could try reading the articles you comment on.
So is something like anti semitism going to help you in this situation or hurt you? So In other words participating in a protest against Israel going to say you have good moral character and you will fight for your clients or is it going to count against you because you disrupted the Deans dinner?
It’s going to show you have a warped moral compass, no respect for the law, and when the ‘protest against Israel’ bleeds over into physical assault against random Jews or vandalism of Jewish property it becomes evidence of moral turpitude.
All this apart from the self-righteous willful ignorance, that being no grounds for barring someone from practice.