For three years now I have sat as a member of the McClellan Committee and watched the grim and disheartening parade of hoodlums, thugs, and venal exploiters of the working man, whose activities on the fringe of the labor movement have cast a pall over the entire structure of American unionism.
The purposes of this long investigation have now, as the Committee's chief counsel pointed out the other day, been "fruitfully realized." Legislation has been enacted to halt the willful abuse of power by a very small minority of union leaders.
But it is a great mistake to suppose that the passage of a bill means that honest and responsible citizens can sit back content with a job well done. The job of labor reform has just begun. And much of the task ahead must inevitably fall upon members of the bar, and bar associations like this one.
The chief counsel of the committee pointed this out last week in his letter of resignation. He wrote to Chairman McClellan:
"In many areas we look to marked improvements in the labor-management picture. The labor movement itself has taken forceful action where it has had the opportunity to rid itself of racketeers and crooks. It is regrettable that this action by organized labor has not been matched by either organized business groups or bar associations."
More than a quarter century ago, we are reminded, Justice Harlan Fiske Stone spoke at the dedication of the University of Michigan Law Quadrangle. His subject – the professional responsibility of the bar. But the Justice did not dwell on the petty abuses of ambulance-chasing – nor did he speak in broad and vague generalizations. His speech was a forceful indictment of two generations of lawyers who had devoted their intellect, their energies, and their training to serving powerful corporate clients. Many of these clients – the corporate giants and financial titans of the 1920's – were unscrupulous and dishonest in their search for wealth and power. Others were merely blind to the responsibilities of those who manage the resources of others – and their recklessness and irresponsibility brought financial ruin to many.
It was the lawyers, charged Justice Stone, who had to bear much of the responsibility for the economic chaos and eventual depression which followed upon their clients' activities. Members of the bar had neglected the high responsibility of a historic profession. They had placed their talents completely in the hands of their clients, abdicating any independent critical judgment; and they had acted in a fashion inconsistent with the needs of society and the demands of legal order. Thus, they had unresistingly submitted their legal skills to serve the machinations which led to disaster.
During the long years of investigation of labor racketeering by the McClellan Committee, I have often thought of Justice Stone's forceful strictures. Time and time again the Committee's relentless probing has shown the dependence of unscrupulous union leaders on the skill and advice of a small band of attorneys whose work disgraces the great profession to which they belong. In many ways this situation presents a striking parallel to that which Justice Stone complained of a quarter century ago.
For during the past few decades, organized labor has also increased tremendously in strength and in wealth. This growth has helped to bring a better life to many men and women. The newly strong unions have become an important part of our social and political scene. They have served the essential economic functions of spreading the benefits of our increased productivity, acting as a counterweight to the power of big business.
This enormous growth in numbers and economic power could not be – and was not – achieved without the assistance of skillful and devoted lawyers. An enormous body of law and regulation has come into existence to meet the vital needs of society produced by emerging unionism. Great skill and technical proficiency – often matching that necessary to understand the enigmas of the Internal Revenue Code – were needed to deal with these new labor codes. And – even more important – the lawyers' skills of sound judgment and negotiation were desperately needed and gratefully used by unions forced to pit their resources against the most powerful corporations of the land.
Many of the able young lawyers who entered the service of labor a generation ago were motivated by the highest ideals of public service. They wished to put their abilities at the service of the many rather than the few, to devote their professional lives to a cause in which they could wholeheartedly believe. For most, that sense of high dedication still guides their actions. And the labor bar contains some of the ablest and most honored members of your profession.
But another breed of lawyers has grown up around the fringe of the labor movement. These are the attorneys who appear before our committee as representatives of those powerful and vicious men who have heartlessly exploited the working men they claim to represent.
I do not deny that all men, whatever their crime or their background, are entitled to legal advice. It is a lawyer's duty to represent all elements of the community, no matter how reprehensible those elements are. But these lawyers are more than representatives. They themselves have actively helped to build the sordid structure of power and greed which our investigations have revealed. To these men the unsparing charges of Justice Stone still apply today.
In labor today – as was then true with corporations – departures from the fiduciary principle rarely occur without the active assistance of some members of your honorable profession. The long story of union malpractices which has unfolded before our committee has again and again brought to light the guiding hand of some reckless member of the bar, concerned only with gain for himself and a few union leaders – disregarding the interests of his real clients, those who pay his fees and retain his services: the members of the union.
Let me give you some examples of these men – these legal labor racketeers:
(1) There are lawyers who arrange, conceal, and even share in the illicit profits of a variety of improper transactions that use union funds or power for the private gain of union officials.
(2) There are lawyers paid from union treasuries built by the contributions of all the members, who have appeared before our committee or a court to advise the suspect union officers not to reveal the purposes for which their clients – the members – dues have been used; or to defend those same officers against charges of stealing from or defrauding those same members who pay the lawyers' salary.
(3) There are lawyers who represent management in the morning and so-called unions or union leaders in the afternoon, who draw up the "sweetheart" contracts that keep respectable unions out, keep wages low and keep the profits to both the employers and the fake union leaders very high indeed. These lawyers have been particularly active lately in the exploitation of Puerto Rican workers for substandard wages in New York.
(4) There are lawyers who organize "paper" locals, sham employer associations, so-called independent unions, and fake health and welfare plans in order to promote the kind of collusion that costs responsible management and labor – as well as the general public – dearly.
(5) There are lawyers who use their position with the union to promote their own financial interests, using union funds or union power to accomplish transactions and investments of benefit only to themselves.
These are but a few examples of men who flaunt the high traditions of honor and integrity of a great and essential profession. I know their activities must be as deeply disturbing to you as they are to me. And yet, with the possible exception of New York State, I know of no bar association which has taken the forceful action necessary to stamp out these practices. I know of no vast outpouring of professional opinion and indignation directed at those who stain the fabric of the law with their sordid activities. I know of no Justice Stone rising up in wrathful indignation to recall to the bar the historic demands of a profession dedicated to justice and the maintenance of legal order.
Certainly this mysterious lack of concern is not because there is any doubt as to the unethical nature of these practices. A lawyer hired by a labor union is the representative of the union – his client is the membership and not a few of the officers. It is the members who pay him, and for whom the union exists. It is the members who elect and employ their officers, vested with the high fiduciary responsibility of managing the union's funds and directing its affairs for the benefit of the members. Certainly, then, we cannot condone lawyers and officers working together to defraud and injure the men whose servants they are supposed to be. The most basic rudiments of legal ethics cry out against such practices.
No, the ethics are clear. It would be worse than naive to suppose that the lawyers of whom I complain do what they do because they are unaware of the unethical – the immoral – character of their acts. Yet they continue – and they are not called to account by their profession.
And the responsibility is your responsibility. The very meaning of a profession is a group of men bound together by dedication to a central core of standards rooted in a fundamental ideal – as in medicine it is healing, so with law it is the ideal of justice. By belonging to the profession of law you have pledged yourself to the maintenance of those standards, and to ensuring that they are rigorously observed by all those who lay claim to the honored title of "attorney at law."
Of course the number of labor lawyers who have engaged in improper practices is a small one. But, as is always the case, a small band of willful men can cast discredit upon an entire group or profession. For your good as well as the nation's, they cannot be allowed to continue on their willful course.
I do not ask you to draft new codes of conduct and canons of ethics. The present ones adequately condemn the malpractices of which I speak. Only informed professional opinion, organized, made articulate, and brought to bear on those areas where, in the words of Mr. Justice Jackson, "the offense is the most flagrant and the public harm the greatest," can do the job. But mobilizing professional opinion will not, of course, prevent every individual instance of wrongdoing. In any field of law or indeed in any area of human endeavor, there are always those whose venality will triumph over all the forces of opinion.
But professional opinion, forcefully articulated, can prevent individual wrongs from becoming an accepted way of life among large numbers of lawyers. It can eradicate the ugly diseases of the unethical practice of law before it spreads. And most important, a mobilized professional opinion can isolate the unethical and the unscrupulous, and leave them standing alone, cast out by the profession to which they lay claim. Then clearly the public will know that what these men do, they do not do as lawyers, but as self-seeking men.
I know that you are angered and disturbed by the practices of which I speak. I trust that today, as in the past, the legal profession will meet all challenges to its integrity as a profession, and rouse itself to cleanse its ranks. Already you have waited too long. You are asked to act now to drive the unscrupulous from the house of the law. In the words of Judge Learned Hand, "There can be no ambiguity in the answer of those who are worthy of the traditions and power of a noble calling."
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 904, "Montgomery County Bar Association, Dayton, Ohio, 17 September 1959." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.