John Adams is rolling in his grave

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Under Duress: Colorado Demands Lawyers Promise Not to Aid Feds on Immigration or Be Locked Out of System

If attorneys don't agree to not work with federal immigration authorities, they can't e-file their client's cases. They basically can't work. If they want to serve clients and work their cases, they are basically held hostage. 

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  • I do not practice immigration law.

  • I do not practice criminal law

  • Nothing about my civil practice has anything to do with this

  • And yet because I cannot log into the State's official e-filing system without saluting The Resistance, I now cannot represent my clients, file lawsuits, access cases, file documents in existing cases, etc.

  • If I click "Decline," it kicks me out of the system. I must click "Accept" to access the system and continue representing my civil clients -- again, in cases that have absolutely nothing to do with immigration law or policy. …..

  • I have ethical obligations to my clients to represent them competently. My existing cases have running deadlines that I must attend to. Judges issue orders in my cases that I must follow. If I don't click "Accept" in order to access the State's e-filing system, I will harm my clients, torpedo my practice, and probably commit malpractice.

There’s a lengthy article in the website Samson Historical explaining the history of the case; here are the concluding paragraphs:

John Adams' Defense of Eight British Soldiers Involved In The Boston Massacre

While Adams was glad to serve his town (and later country) in this way of defending the right to a fair trial, he did not take specific pride in the fact that he was the one to do it. In fact, he suggested that any man should have done it due to a sense of duty and that “(j)]udgment of Death against those Soldiers would have been as foul a Stain upon this Country as the Executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently. As the Evidence was, the Verdict of the Jury was exactly right”.

In sum, the December 1770 trial was an important test in the rule of law. Certainly, the Boston Massacre itself is much more memorable and invoked the patriotic feelings and desire to overthrow British rule that we associate with the American war for independence. However, the December 1770 trial of the British captain and soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre established that America was going to be a nation of laws, of innocence until proven guilty, and of the right to self-defense, no matter how liked or hated the defendant was. Everyone was going to be equal before the law.

After December 1770 and the conclusion of the two trials, Boston was relatively calm until the Tea Act of 1773 that prompted the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773. Adams reflected fondly on his decision to defend the British captain and soldiers:

"It was one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered to my country."

We learned about John Adams in junior high and how he courageously stood up against the mob by taking on the defense of hated defendants and thereby reinforcing the concept that we intended to be a nation of law, not monarchal whim even though, ironically, he was defending the monarch’s soldiers.

All today’s students know about our revolution is that it was fomented by a bunch of now-dead, irrelevant old white men who staged a war to preserve slavery. The products of this “education” are now in law firms and our courts and our political structure, where they force the firing of senior partners at their firms who dared to defend persecuted Trump administration members in his first term and, in state legislatures and our courts, impose prohibitions like this, one all while preaching that “we’re a nation of laws”.