To the Editor:
Re “How a Legislation Agency Determined to Fold As a substitute of Battle,” (entrance web page, March 23):
As the previous professional bono coordinator at a serious New York, legislation agency I’m sufficiently old to have lived via McCarthyism, so I learn with dismay your article on the complicity of the Paul, Weiss legislation agency with President Trump. No matter any short-term monetary good points, the agency is on the flawed aspect of historical past.
We keep in mind Pete Seeger refusing to call names whereas providing to sing a tune, Arthur Miller writing “The Crucible” about witch hunts and Edward R. Murrow bravely exposing Senator Joseph McCarthy on the nascent medium of tv, whereas those that testified are actually relegated to perfidy or oblivion.
One other hero was Joseph Welch, a companion in a famend Boston legislation agency, who helped topple Senator McCarthy with a memorable confrontation in Congress along with his well-known retort, “Have you ever no sense of decency?”
Highly effective legislation companies throughout the nation ought to equally step up. Their collective adherence to precept would trigger the administration to lose its energy over legislation companies. The rule of legislation and democracy would then be strengthened.
Daniel L. Greenberg
New York
The author is a former lawyer in chief on the Authorized Help Society and a founding father of Expertise Justice.
To the Editor:
My grandfather Louis S. Weiss was a founding companion of Paul, Weiss. My father, Louis H. Pollak (who President Trump would have labeled as a “radical left lunatic”), was a federal decide, civil rights advocate and constitutional legislation professional who labored briefly at that agency. Each of those legal professionals would have been horrified by Brad Karp’s capitulation to the Trump administration. They may even have referred to as the $40 million deal a payoff — and a spineless one at that.
Sally Pollak
Burlington, Vt.
To the Editor:
It’s inconceivable to learn of Paul, Weiss’s capitulation to President Trump and never consider Shakespeare’s well-known line from “Henry VI”: “The very first thing we do, let’s kill all of the legal professionals.” Usually interpreted as a criticism of the authorized occupation, the assertion is something however: As a substitute, it displays the belief that attorneys are the guardians of society. Or as Supreme Courtroom Justice John Paul Stevens wrote: “As a cautious studying of the textual content will reveal, Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of legal professionals is a step within the course of a totalitarian type of authorities.”
The president’s all-out assault on the judiciary and main legislation companies isn’t just motivated by private grievance and revenge: He, too, understands that the continued existence of a fearless judiciary and a sturdy cadre of prosecutors and protection attorneys is the best risk to his authoritarian agenda.
Glenn Kurlander
Palm Seashore Gardens, Fla.
The author is a retired companion on the legislation agency Kirkland & Ellis.
To the Editor:
As a authorized historian of Nazi Germany and former affiliate on the legislation agency Paul, Weiss, let me say this to its current wheelers and sellers: In crises, some legal professionals rise to the second. You didn’t. Others will. As a result of they lack the institutional safety that you just get pleasure from, they are going to face higher dangers. As a result of they lack the institutional leverage that you just wield, they will hope just for smaller successes. However previously, even lone legal professionals have put every part on the road for the rule of legislation.
With all of your credentials, you may study from these legal professionals, in addition to a lot of your nonlawyer neighbors, that the rule of legislation makes all of the distinction between democracy and tyranny.
Douglas G. Morris
New York
The author is an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Legislation Faculty and a retired assistant federal defender in New York.
To the Editor:
The capitulation of Paul, Weiss to the coercion introduced by President Trump is shameful and harms the resistance to Mr. Trump’s assault on the rule of legislation. It is a second that requires braveness and dedication to the preservation of democracy, a motion that ought to be led by legal professionals — the pure guardians of the Structure and the supremacy of legislation.
As a lawyer and retired decide, I’m flabbergasted {that a} legislation agency as vaunted and highly effective as Paul, Weiss would refuse to guide a problem to the Trump administration’s patently illegal try and punish legal professionals. It seems that the agency has higher concern for its backside line and the pursuit of favor.
Much more despicable is the agency’s dedication to make use of its authorized muscle, freed from cost, to advertise causes designated by Mr. Trump and to re-examine its personal inside insurance policies coping with equality in its personnel practices. The agency’s settlement with Mr. Trump quantities to unpardonable groveling and full give up.
Gerald Harris
New York
The author is a retired New York Metropolis felony courtroom decide.
The Actuality on Campus
To the Editor:
Re “It Is Dealing with a Marketing campaign of Annihilation: Three Columnists on Trump’s Warfare In opposition to Academia,” by M. Gessen, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Bret Stephens (Opinion, nytimes.com, March 15):
I consider that the lived expertise of these in universities, in precise lecture rooms, will not be what conservatives suppose it’s. That is true for each college and college students.
I’m a progressive, however in my classroom I do not need a progressive agenda. The truth is, I’ve an instructional agenda. The issue is that the small group of scholars or outsiders who shut down or disrupt conservative audio system’ visits to campus make credible to the general public the concept that universities are seething cauldrons of a leftist witches’ brew. That is what the general public sees, however this isn’t what universities are about. And someway we now have to make this clear.
Mark Sheldon
Chicago
The author is a professor of philosophy and bioethics at Northwestern College.
To the Editor:
Bret Stephens’s characterization of universities like Columbia and Berkeley as “primarily factories of Maoist cadres” is an absurd distortion of actuality and a reckless one at this explicit political second.
I invite Mr. Stephens to come back to Berkeley to fulfill any considered one of our 1,000 political science majors, attend considered one of our lessons, peruse our syllabuses or learn the analysis we produce. He’ll discover curiosity, critical inquiry and rigor. We offer college students with instruments to consider our world, not with dogma about what to consider.
Scott Straus
Berkeley, Calif.
The author is a professor of political science on the College of California, Berkeley.
Earlier than Child Tech
To the Editor:
Re “Greatest Tech for Infants? No matter Works for You,” by Brian X. Chen (Tech Repair column, Enterprise, March 20):
I discovered Mr. Chen’s overview of all the child tech units he used along with his toddler daughter miserable. It bolstered how glad I’m to have raised my kids at a time once we might be analog dad and mom.
The rocking they obtained was from our arms, nonetheless irregular the rhythm. The songs they heard had been from my imperfect voice. The milk they drank was mine, or — later — system that was swiftly blended and warmed.
We realized of their misery once we heard them cry from one other room, with out a visible cue. The white noise they heard was in all probability our radiator. They slept or woke with the sunshine of day or the darkish pitch of night time, not smartphone-controlled colours. Their diapers had been modified as a result of we checked them often. In particular person.
I’m not going to let you know that they grew as much as be excellent individuals — nobody does — or that these options match everybody’s circumstances. However why not lean into the method of studying to grasp your kids straight, with out pointless technological interference? It’s good for them, and it’s good for you.
It’s not a foul place to begin if you’re involved concerning the decline of empathy in our tradition.
Naomi Segal Deitz
Portland, Ore.
