Michael S. Greco
President, American Bar Association
Remarks to the ABA House of Delegates
2006 ABA Midyear Meeting
Chicago, Illinois
February 13, 2006
Mr. Chairman, members of the House of Delegates, colleagues and friends
thank you for that warm welcome.
I begin by asking you to join me in expressing heartfelt thanks to the members of
the New Orleans Midyear Meeting Advisory Committee, co-chaired by Judy Perry
Martinez and David Bienvenu, for their tremendous efforts to plan a meeting for us that
could not be held in their great city because of the destruction caused by Hurricane
Katrina. Our thoughts and prayers are with you, and with all of the people of the Gulf
Region who have suffered such enormous losses.
I am very pleased to announce that the Association has been able to make a
contribution of $100,000 to the New Orleans Tourism Workers Relief Fund from savings
realized by holding this Mid-Year Meeting here in balmy Chicago, and by the generous
matching contribution of the Hyatt Regency Chicago.
I am also pleased that the ABA Board of Governors has granted my request to
hold the Board s June meeting in New Orleans. And we have vowed to return to New
Orleans for a Midyear Meeting at the earliest possible opportunity.
The Association, and America s lawyers, will continue to volunteer our help for as
long it takes the City of New Orleans to rebuild, and our fellow citizens to rebuild their
lives.
Please join me in welcoming to the House my wife, Dianne. I thank her and our
children for their unfailing support for what I am doing this year. I am also pleased that
my brother Dean and sister Ann Marie are able to be here today.
During my ABA travels throughout our country and abroad I have been greatly
impressed by the high esteem, and reverence, in which the ABA and its members are
held. I wish that you could hear and see what I do on my travels, so that you can
understand the magnitude of the respect that American lawyers and judges have
throughout the world.
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Let me share with you just one experience that will help explain what I mean.
The week before Christmas I traveled at the request of our CEELI Rule of Law
Initiative to support our efforts in Kosovo and Serbia.
In Kosovo I met with and addressed the leaders and members of the national bar
association that we helped to create, and of the judicial association that we helped to
develop, and with scores of government leaders who are struggling to embrace
democracy and freedom after nearly a century of oppressive rule by governments
dominated by a powerful executive.
In Serbia I addressed a Constitutional Conference, where the country s leaders
are struggling to create a constitutional democracy.
I shared with them policy positions adopted by this House regarding the critical
importance of embracing the rule of law rather than the rule of man.
I said to them that in 2006 they are dealing with the same issues that the
Founders of our democracy struggled with in 1776. And I urged them to consider
adopting our system of separation of powers, of checks and balances, and to create an
independent judiciary --- and then to protect it with all their might.
Over and over, so many of them told me how grateful they are to the American
Bar Association and to our volunteer lawyers and judges for the assistance we are
providing, and that the progress they are making simply could not happen without the
assistance of the ABA and its members. It moved me deeply to hear their heartfelt
words of gratitude and respect for our Association, and for American lawyers and
judges.
The support that our Association, and countless lawyer and judge volunteers, are
providing through our four regional Rule of Law Initiatives -- CEELI, Asia, Africa and
Latin America, and since August under the umbrella of our new ABA Center for Rule of
Law Initiatives, is accomplishing several objectives: legal and judicial reform, economic
development - for both the emerging democracies and our country and perhaps most
important -- advancement of the rule of law and protection of human rights and freedom
throughout the world.
Those of you who attended the outstanding, first ever, ABA Rule of Law
Symposium in Washington DC in November joined 400 leaders from forty nations on
five continents, and many of our own government leaders and three US Supreme Court
Justices, in two days of meetings that everyone in attendance found to be of critical
importance in advancing the rule of law throughout the world.
In October the ABA and the All China Lawyers Association, the national bar of
China, co-sponsored an important conference in Suzhou at which I provided keynote
remarks, and where my counterpart, the president of ACLA, and I engaged in the first of
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a series of discussions during the past months regarding future collaborations by our
organizations. As a result of those discussions we are in the process of negotiating an
agreement by which our two associations will engage in valuable lawyer and information
exchanges and programming during the next five years. With the approval of our Board
of Governors, three days ago I sent a draft Memorandum of Understanding prepared by
our ABA-Asia Council to ACLA s president. Execution of this agreement will create
great opportunities for the ABA and our members.
Clearly, the respect and hospitality shown to me both at home and abroad is a
direct reflection of your efforts and your commitment to advancing the rule of law and
serving the cause of justice, and of the hard work and dedication of our outstanding
ABA staff, led by Executive Director Bob Stein. I thank all our members and staff for
your magnificent efforts, and I pledge to continue to represent the Association and
advance the policies adopted by this House to the best of my abilities.
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I want to spend a few minutes this morning talking with you about just several of
the many challenges that our Association and profession are addressing as we reach
the mid-point of this bar year.
Lawyers undertake many responsibilities in our society we are problem solvers,
zealous advocates, peacemakers, defenders of the rule of law, and opponents of
tyranny in its many forms. We are called upon to protect our Constitution and all that it
promises, to protect the powerless from the whims of the powerful, the minority from the
majority, and to ensure that equal justice under law is a promise kept not just for the
wealthy and privileged, but for all.
The ABA Commission on a Renaissance of Idealism in the Legal Profession,
which I appointed last August, is working hard to fulfill that promise. Led by its Honorary
Co-Chairs, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Theodore C. Sorensen, and by Chair Mark
D. Agrast, the Commission is at work on a number of initiatives to encourage and
enable more lawyers to perform more pro bono and public service work in their
communities.
The Renaissance Commission has produced a compelling 14-minute DVD video
with inspiring commentary by Justice Ginsburg, Mr. Sorensen, past President Dennis
Archer, and a few words from me, on the role of the lawyer that will be distributed
throughout the US, and a Resource Guide of Best Practices in Pro Bono and Public
Service, available on our ABA web site, that describes 160 highly successful pro bono
and public service programs. The Commission has developed an implementation plan
for advancing a Renaissance of Idealism in our profession that includes the participation
of all state and local bar association leaders, all Law School Deans, leaders of
government agencies, and law office decision-makers throughout our county about
which you will hear more detail in due course.
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The Commission has also submitted a policy report and recommendation on
public service issues for lawyers that will be presented for your consideration later
today. Recognition of the public service responsibilities of lawyers, in addition to our
responsibility to provide pro bono legal representation, is an important step for the ABA
in our efforts to help revitalize the lawyer s role as Public Citizen in our society.
I thank the Commission and the co-sponsors of this report and recommendation,
and urge you to give it your enthusiastic support.
Working together we can re-invigorate the lawyer s strongly held sense of
purpose and dedication to the highest ideals and noble principles of the legal
profession: to assist the poor, disadvantaged and underprivileged; and to perform
public service that enhances the common good.
That is the lawyer s proud calling.
And that is why the legal profession, and not any other, is singled out for mention
in the US Constitution.
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The ABA Task Force on Access to Civil Justice, which I appointed last August, is
also hard at work helping to advance the goal of equal justice for all. Led by Maine
Supreme Court Justice Howard Dana, Jr., the Task Force is crafting new approaches to
meet the legal needs of lower-income Americans, 70-80% of which, lamentably, each
year go unaddressed needs that only continue to grow and that multiply the suffering
of the disadvantaged and poor in our society.
As I reported to you last August, I have asked the Task Force to consider
carefully and report to this House on an idea whose time has come: a defined right to
counsel for vulnerable, low-income Americans in certain serious civil matters. While it
raises several issues, the driving force behind this idea is a simple one: ensuring that
everyone in our nation, the world s most bountiful country of hope and promise, has an
advocate at their side when facing the denial or loss of those things that are basic to
human survival: shelter, food, and keeping family and health intact.
No one in our country should have to face the denial of legal or governmental
rights affecting those basic needs without counsel to help them. No one.
The Task Force is preparing a report with recommendations on a civil right to
counsel that will be presented to this House at the Annual Meeting in Hawaii. I ask you
to participate actively in the debate on an issue that I believe will help define the
principles of our profession and the values of our nation in the 21st Century.
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In the meantime, we must continue to advocate strongly for adequate funding for
the Legal Services Corporation. Last week, the President s Fiscal Year 2007 budget
request to Congress would cut LSC funding by $20 million. We must not only prevent
that cut, we must press for an increase in the LSC s budget. While we all recognize the
pressures on the federal budget, turning away more than half of all low-income
Americans who go to LSC-funded programs for desperately-needed legal assistance is
unacceptable, and it is shameful.
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Another great responsibility we as members of the legal profession have relates
to our role as teachers.
The ABA Commission on Civic Education and the Separation of Powers, led by
Honorary Co-Chairs Justice Sandra Day O Connor and former US Senator Bill Bradley
and Chair Robert H. Rawson, and comprised of a bi-partisan group of extremely
distinguished national leaders from government and education, is working to improve
civic education in America.
Today, incredible as it sounds, nearly half of all Americans cannot identify the
three branches of government, or the meaning of separation of powers, or checks and
balances, or the core responsibilities of a judge. There is a serious consequence here
for all of us that we ignore at our peril: When nearly half the people in a democracy do
not know how their government works, what rights are granted to them by the
Constitution, or the role of an independent judiciary, those people and our democracy
-- are easy prey for those who would abuse those rights.
It falls on the shoulders of lawyers, and our Association in partnership with the
nation s educators and the media to stem this extremely troubling trend of an
uninformed public, by taking concrete steps to improve civic education about the
institutions of our democracy, particularly an independent judiciary.
Our Association and America s lawyers must do everything possible to protect an
independent judiciary, and to oppose ideological attacks on the judiciary, whether from
the right or the left. Without an impartial and independent judiciary, that is free to do
justice without fear or favor, the rule of law will not survive.
It is an informed and engaged public, more than any other factor, which will
ensure the survival of our republic.
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You and I know that the principles on which our republic was based, and that
continue to secure our freedoms, are as relevant and timely today as they were at our
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nation s founding perhaps even more so. Just a glance at current headlines highlights
their central importance.
For example, questions about the limits of presidential power in the wake of
recent revelations -- which Americans and many legal scholars have called shocking -about secret surveillance of American citizens during the past four years, and the roles
of Congress and the Judiciary on this fundamental constitutional issue, have farreaching implications for all of us.
In response to these revelations, and mindful of the core mission of the American
Bar Association to protect the rights of the American people, last month I appointed the
ABA Task Force on Domestic Surveillance in the Fight Against Terrorism. Chaired by
Neal Sonnett, a former chair of our Criminal Justice Section, the distinguished and bipartisan Task Force includes a former Counsel to the National Security Agency, a
former Director of the FBI, a former General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency,
the Dean of the Yale Law School, former chairs of our Standing Committee on Law and
National Security, and former chairs of the Sections of International Law and Individual
Rights & Responsibilities all of whom possess great expertise on the legal issues
surrounding the Administration s secret surveillance program.
This respected group has produced a unanimously agreed to report and six
recommendations for action by the House today. I look forward to a thoughtful and
open, and historic, discussion of the Task Force s recommendations and report on the
floor of the House later today. I urge your support for the Task Force s
recommendations.
What do the American people say about the subject that the Task Force has now
carefully considered warrantless eavesdropping on Americans authorized unilaterally
by the president, without consultation with Congress or the confidential FISA court, and
ignoring the requirements of the FISA Act adopted by Congress in 1978?
Last week the Association commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct a survey
of Americans to learn their opinions on the President s secret surveillance program.
The survey results speak clearly of the great concern that most Americans have about
what the president is doing: 77% of the persons polled think that the president, on his
own, should not be able to suspend constitutional freedoms, while 25% within that total
think that the president must obtain approval from Congress or the courts before
suspending constitutional freedoms. Only 18% of respondents replied that the
President can suspend constitutional freedoms any time he thinks necessary for
national security.
I am heartened by these results. All of us in America support the aggressive
deterrence of terrorism. But our Constitution and our laws give our government ample
power to act swiftly in times of danger, while also protecting our freedoms.
I reject the false choice that is being offered to Americans, that they must
sacrifice their freedom to have security. We must insist that our government protect
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both. The survey results reaffirm the principle, articulated by colonial patriot Thomas
Paine in his pamphlet, Common Sense, that, while in England the king was the law, in
America the law is king. The survey results also reaffirm, 230 years after the
Revolution, Americans continuing abhorrence and outrage with warrantless searches,
the match that ignited the American Revolution.
We and our Association have a sacred obligation to the American people to
address this and similar constitutional issues head on, and to give the Administration,
Congress and the people the benefit of our careful analysis. America s lawyers must
continue to help find the right balance between safeguarding our national security and
upholding basic Constitutional freedoms. The American people look to the legal
profession to protect their freedoms.
We will not fail them.
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Our Association and profession have responded to yet another unprecedented
challenge since we last met here in Chicago six months ago the legal needs arising
from the destruction and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and other storms.
Even before Katrina had finished ravaging the Gulf Coast I had appointed the
ABA Task Force on Hurricane Katrina, chaired by past ABA President N. Lee Cooper,
to lead our profession s response to the most destructive natural disaster in our nation s
history. Chair Cooper and the presidents of the state bars in the Gulf Region will
provide the House with a complete report on relief and recovery efforts later this
morning.
I want to commend the bar associations and lawyers of America for their
magnificent and soul-stirring efforts to help victims of these disasters. But the hurricane
victims need our help now more than ever. As residents return to the Gulf States to
rebuild their lives, homes, and businesses, they have extraordinary need for volunteer
legal services of every conceivable kind. Those who have been displaced to other
states are also in desperate need of legal assistance.
The legal problems arising from the hurricanes are only just beginning to surface
in significant volume. I therefore encourage you, and hope that you in turn will
encourage our colleagues across the country, to remain committed to helping our fellow
citizens get back on their feet. Our services are desperately needed by the tens of
thousands of devastated hurricane victims who have legal needs but nowhere to turn,
and who need hope to continue on.
We can help provide them with that hope. I ask you to do your part.
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Our Association has accomplished so much more during the past six months,
including ---- The great service provided by our Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary,
so ably chaired by Stephen Tober, to the US Senate and the American people with its
evaluation of three US Supreme Court nominees and numerous lower federal court
nominees, a service that last month received high praise from both Republicans and
Democrats in the US Senate;
-- The vitally important work being done by our Task Force on Attorney-Client
Privilege, which President Grey appointed last year and which I re-appointed so that it
can continue our efforts to persuade the Justice Department and the US Sentencing
Commission to cease the coerced waiver of the privilege, and the escalating assault on
the lawyer s ability to counsel clients and serve society as lawyers have done since the
beginning of our nation.
I have asked the Task Force to return to this House at our Annual Meeting in
August with a new policy recommendation on coerced waivers of the attorney-client
privilege, if efforts to resolve these issues by negotiation in the next several months are
unavailing. Ultimately, the legal battle with federal governmental agencies to protect
the bed-rock principle of the attorney client-privilege may have to be joined in court, as it
was in our successful battle against the FTC over its mystifying effort to regulate
lawyers as financial institutions under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. I assure you that
the Association will not hesitate to take that step, if it becomes necessary, in order to
protect a privilege that has protected Americans since the beginning of our nation.
-- The important work of our new ABA Center for Diversity Initiatives, chaired by
past president Dennis Archer, is continuing to enhance the diversity of our profession;
--Our Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law is addressing the needs
of lawyers with disabilities through a first-ever ABA conference this coming May;
--Our wonderful Legal Opportunity Scholarship Fund has enabled more than 120
young persons of color to attend law school, and I applaud the very generous financial
support of our Sections for this wonderful program and encourage all within the
Association to support it;
--Our Commission on Immigration is today bringing several important policy
recommendations to the House to ensure that, in this proud nation of immigrants that
built and sustained our country, justice is afforded to our nation s current immigrants. I
urge you to give your full support to these important recommendations.
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I conclude with this.
At the mid-point of a bar association year that already can be deemed
momentous, I say this to the members of the House of Delegates:
The American Bar Association is healthy, strong, and full of vitality.
The Association and its 407,000 members are faithfully discharging our solemn
obligations to the legal profession and to the American people to improve the legal
profession, to protect the constitutional freedoms that we all hold dear, and to protect
the institutions of our republic.
The importance of the lawyer in society has never been greater than it is today.
Do not ever forget that.
I am proud of our Association and my colleagues, and honored to be able to
represent both. And I look forward with confidence in our ability to deal with whatever
challenges the next six months will bring.
Your support is a great source of strength to our Association and to me. I thank
you for that and for your kind attention this morning.
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