Retiring NYT Legal Reporter Warns Law Grads Not to be Parasites
Linda Greenhouse, the retiring Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times, asked graduates of a Rhode Island law school on Friday to help the legal profession “climb back from the abyss.”
Speaking at commencement ceremonies for the Roger Williams University School of Law, Greenhouse warned graduates not to be parasites on society, the Providence Journal reports.
Greenhouse said there are three kinds of lawyers: social engineers, parasites on society and enablers to law abuse and neglect. Her statement used a modified quote from the late civil-rights attorney Charles Hamilton Houston.
An enabler, she said, is the kind of lawyer who writes legal memos stating that the military does not have to abide by the Fourth Amendment during wartime.
Greenhouse told grads they should be social engineers who help improve conditions for all. Those who follow this heroic path can help “find and reclaim our deepest values,” she said.
Greenhouse’s criticism of enablers took an indirect swipe at John Yoo, a former Justice Department official who is now a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley law school. He reportedly wrote a 2001 Justice Department memorandum taking the position that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures doesn’t apply to military operations in terrorism cases on U.S. soil.
Greenhouse is married to Eugene Fidell, a military law expert who has criticized administration positions in terrorism cases. She took a voluntary buyout from the New York Times and will become a journalist-in-residence and senior fellow at Yale Law School.
