Today’s Rule of Law crisis may result first-and-foremost from decades of gross neglect and even Ethics Rules violations by the legal profession’s supposed police, its Bar Enforcement Authorities. BEAs in DC, VT and virtually every other jurisdiction have literally never enforced the profession’s Honor Code (Rule 8.3) and virtually never enforced its prohibition on statements lacking a good faith basis (Rule 3.1). How can a profession claim to have an Honor Code that is literally never enforced; and how is justice obtained if lawyers can with escalate and prolong disputes without any good faith basis?

1993 warnings; ABA efforts; BEA erasures: Yale Law School Dean A. Kronman warned in 1993 that “Every year produces … renewed doubts about the ability of the profession to police itself.”  In 2003 and in express response to “nationwide furor that resulted from the collapse of Enron,” the ABA and all 50 states exponentially expanded attorney’s duties to speak up. Disclosure mandates previously limited to future bodily harm were expanded to harm that is future or past; bodily or financial. Yet BEAs effectively erased the expansions by ignoring them, sometimes going so far as to themselves violate 3.1 through baseless dismissals that, in some states, are are not only concealed but also unappealable to Courts.

DC, VT, & CA. RTL focuses on DC because of its heightened importance to democracy; VT because it has never enforced 8.3 or 3.1 (even after a survey revealed >1,000 violations per year of 3.1 alone); and CA because, following a scandal similar to VT’s, it enacted a uniquely strong 8.3 and conducted an outside investigation of its BEAs that found a “shocking … culture of unethical and unacceptable behavior” amid “systematic organizational dysfunction that persisted for many years.”

Outside Investigations . BEAs beg the age-old question, “Who Will Watch The Watchers?” If we are to return to the Rule Of Law in the mold of prior generations, BEAs must answer to persons other than those whom they regulate. As were BEAs in California, BEAs in DC, VT, and other jurisdictions who have never enforced 8.3 and/or otherwise brazenly ignored their duties must be investigated by others whose findings are made public.