Bench & Bar

JUL 2015

The Bench & Bar magazine is published to provide members of the KBA with information that will increase their knowledge of the law, improve the practice of law, and assist in improving the quality of legal services for the citizenry.

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In February of this year, I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Samantha Nutt talk about the significant work she is doing through an organization called Advocates for War Child. Dr. Nutt is a 45 year old family physician who lives in Toronto. A number of years ago, she traveled to a strife torn area in central Africa with the noble and idealistic goal of providing medical care to patients in desperate need. Dr. Nutt soon realized that the problems she saw were much deeper and more profound than she had thought. Those with power in the area in which she was working were warlords, gangs, and criminals. The innocent victims were average people, often children and women, who were trying to live their lives. Because the perpetrators could act with impunity, hopelessness was the order of the day. Dr. Nutt has been leading a successful effort in Uganda, the Congo, Afghanistan, and Lebanon to transfer support from simply providing medical and food aid to assisting in re-establishing the Rule of Law and enforcing basic human rights. The approach of War Child is to re-build legal structures, provide access to free legal counsel, and provide training opportunities to police, lawyers, judges, law students and other legal aid service providers. Dr. Nutt's presentation made me realize that I had never fully understood what "the Rule of Law" meant. I tended to take our system for granted. Ours is a society in which the police assist in dealing with violations of our criminal laws, and our judges oversee a system in which society works to see that the guilty are punished while the rights of the accused are respected. In our society, contracts are routinely performed according to their terms. On those occasions when a contract is breached, we have courthouses in which relief can be sought. On this the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, we recall that King John agreed that his power would be limited and that the rights of the barons would be respected. In my lifetime, I witnessed the Watergate scandal unfold leading to the approval in the House Judiciary Committee of articles to impeach President Nixon. Soon thereafter, Richard Nixon resigned his presidency. Before President Nixon resigned, his vice president had also resigned for crimes he had committed as an office holder in Maryland. The Rule of Law applies to all of us. Or, as we sometimes hear, "No one is above the law." In Baltimore, six police officers have been indicted for alleged criminal misconduct in the death of a young man who had been arrested. The legal process will play out in Baltimore. We have some confidence that the rules will be fol- lowed, the rights of the accused will be protected, and a just result will be reached. The situation in Baltimore reminds us that the law applies to those who help us enforce our criminal laws as well as to those others in our society suspected of criminal activity. Eight hundred years after Magna Carta, the Rule of Law re- mains a work in progress. In this country, we enslaved African Americans until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the adoption in 1865 of the 13th Amendment to the Constitu- tion. As a nation, we did not assure the right of women to vote until 1920 when we ratified the 19th Amendment. "To Kill a Mockingbird" tells the story of our failure in many cases to assure equal justice under law. Until 1956, the law required that Louisville's schools would be segregated. Thus, in 1955 when I entered kindergarten, the law mandated that my classmates were all white. One year later, my first grade class included two African-American children. Six decades later, Louisville continues to work on what it means for our schools to be racially integrated. The steps taken in the past 150 years to extend the vote to African Americans and to women, to improve fairness in the prosecution of those accused of crimes, and to erase the vestiges of Jim Crow show that progress is possible and is occurring. This tells me that the work that Dr. Nutt and her group is doing to bring the Rule of Law to areas where it is in short supply can succeed. It will take effort and time, but Advocates for War Child is making substantial progress. My view as the Kentucky Bar Association vice president and presi- dent-elect and now as KBA president has been and is that this is our time to act. The KBA is working on several fronts to improve the administration of justice. First and foremost, the KBA Board seeks to meet its core duties in the area of attorney discipline, to oversee the KBA's committees and sections, and to carry out budg- etary oversight in other areas of Bar governance. Once we have those basic obligations in hand, we are looking outward to support overdue increases in the compensation of our judges and their staffs, to support our veterans, and to support diversity and inclu- sion in the legal profession. In an interview that appears in this issue of the Bench & Bar, I outline specific steps we have taken. We are not going to be able to completely solve the problems we face. But, we have already helped. The world needs more lawyers so that the people of Uganda, the Congo, Afghanistan, and Lebanon will have safer lives and will be treated more fairly. Having learned that lesson, I have also learned to be more appreciative of the attorneys and judges who make up the Kentucky Bar Association, and I am more proud than ever to be a lawyer. I have also become more appreciative of the benefits we enjoy because of the system of laws and courts we have that I had tended to take for granted. I look forward to the coming year in which I will continue to work with the KBA's Board and staff to improve the administration of justice in the Commonwealth. 2 B&B; • 7.15 P R E S I D E N T ' S M E S S A G E WHY THE WORLD NEEDS MORE LAWYERS By: Doug Farnsley Farnsley family adult children, their spouses, and three grandchildren joined Doug and Liza Farnsley for Doug's June 18 induction as KBA President.

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