To the Editor:
Re “How a Law Firm Decided to Fold Instead of Fight,” (front page, March 23):
As the former pro bono coordinator at a major New York law firm I am old enough to have lived through McCarthyism, so I read with dismay your article on the complicity of the Paul, Weiss law firm with President Donald Trump. Regardless of any short-term financial gains, the firm is on the wrong side of history.
We remember Pete Seeger refusing to name names while offering to sing a song, Arthur Miller writing “The Crucible” about witch hunts, and Edward R. Murrow bravely exposing Senator Joseph McCarthy on the nascent medium of television while those who testified are now relegated to perfidy or oblivion.
Another hero was Joseph Welch, a partner in a renowned Boston law firm, who helped topple Senator McCarthy with a memorable confrontation in Congress with his famous retort, “Have you no sense of decency?”
Powerful law firms across the country should similarly step up. Their collective adherence to principle would mean that clients had nowhere else to go, and would cause the administration to lose its power over law firms. The rule of law and democracy would then be strengthened.
Daniel L. Greenberg
New York
The writer is a former attorney-in-chief at the Legal Aid Society and a founder of Experience Justice.
To the Editor:
My grandfather, Louis S. Weiss, was a founding partner of Paul, Weiss. My father, Louis H. Pollak (who President Trump would have classified as a “radical left lunatic”), was a federal judge, civil rights advocate and constitutional law expert who worked briefly at that firm. Both of these lawyers would have been horrified by Brad Karp’s capitulation to the Trump administration. They might even have called the $40 million deal a payoff — and a spineless one at that.
Sally Pollak
Burlington, Vt.
To the Editor:
It’s impossible to read of Paul, Weiss’s capitulation to President Trump and not think of Shakespeare’s famous line from “Henry VI”: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Often interpreted as a criticism of the legal profession, the statement is anything but: Instead, it reflects the realization that attorneys are the guardians of society. Or as the former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote: “As a careful reading of the text will reveal, Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”
The president’s all-out assault on the judiciary and major law firms is not just motivated by personal grievance and revenge: He, too, understands that the continued existence of a fearless judiciary and a robust cadre of prosecutors and defense attorneys is the greatest threat to his authoritarian agenda.
Glenn Kurlander
Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
The writer is a retired partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis.
To the Editor:
As a legal historian of Nazi Germany and former associate at the law firm Paul, Weiss, let me say this to its present wheelers and dealers: In crises, some lawyers rise to the moment. You did not. Others will. Because they lack the institutional protection that you enjoy, they will face greater risks. Because they lack the institutional leverage that you wield, they can hope only for smaller successes. But in the past even lone lawyers have put everything on the line for the rule of law.
With all your credentials, you might learn from those lawyers, as well as many of your nonlawyer neighbors, that the rule of law makes all the difference between democracy and tyranny.
Douglas G. Morris
New York
The writer is an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and a retired assistant federal defender in New York.
To the Editor:
The capitulation of Paul, Weiss to the coercion brought by President Donald Trump is shameful and harms the resistance to Mr. Trump’s assault on the rule of law. This is a moment that calls for courage and commitment to the preservation of democracy, a movement that should be led by lawyers — the natural guardians of the Constitution and the supremacy of law.
As a lawyer and retired judge I am flabbergasted that a law firm as vaunted and powerful as Paul, Weiss would refuse to lead a challenge to the Trump administration’s patently unlawful attempt to punish lawyers. It appears that the firm has greater concern for its bottom line and the pursuit of favor.
Even more despicable is the firm’s commitment to use its legal muscle, free of charge, to promote causes designated by Mr. Trump and to re-examine its own internal policies dealing with equality in its personnel practices. The firm’s agreement with Mr. Trump amounts to unpardonable groveling and complete surrender.
Gerald Harris
New York
The writer is a retired New York City criminal court judge.
The Reality on Campus
To the Editor:
Re “It Is Facing a Campaign of Annihilation: Three Columnists on Trump’s War Against Academia,” by M. Gessen, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Bret Stephens (Opinion, nytimes.com, March 15):
I believe that the lived experience of those in universities, in actual classrooms, is not what conservatives think it is. This is true for both faculty and students.
I am a progressive, but in my classroom I do not have a progressive agenda. In fact, I have an academic agenda. The problem is that the small group of students or outsiders who close down or disrupt conservative speakers’ visits to campus make credible to the public the idea that universities are seething cauldrons of a leftist witches’ brew. This is what the public sees, but this is not what universities are about. And somehow we have to make this clear.
Mark Sheldon
Chicago
The writer is a professor of philosophy and bioethics at Northwestern University.
To the Editor:
Bret Stephens’s characterization of universities like Columbia and Berkeley as “essentially factories of Maoist cadres” is an absurd distortion of reality and a reckless one at this particular political moment.
I invite Mr. Stephens to come to Berkeley to meet any one of our 1,000 political science majors, attend one of our classes, peruse our syllabuses or read the research we produce. He will find curiosity, serious inquiry and rigor. We provide students with tools to think about our world, not with dogma about what to believe.
Scott Straus
Berkeley, Calif.
The writer is a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Before Baby Tech
To the Editor:
Re “Best Tech for Babies? Whatever Works for You,” by Brian X. Chen (Tech Fix column, Business, March 20):
I found Mr. Chen’s review of all the baby tech devices he used with his infant daughter depressing. It reinforced how glad I am to have raised my children at a time where we could be analog parents.
The rocking they received was from our arms, however irregular the rhythm. The songs they heard were from my imperfect voice. The milk they drank was mine, or — later — formula that was hastily mixed and warmed.
We learned of their distress when we heard them cry from another room, without a visual cue. The white noise they heard was probably our radiator. They slept or woke with the light of day or the dark pitch of night, not smartphone-controlled colors. Their diapers were changed because we checked them regularly. In person.
I am not going to tell you that they grew up to be perfect people — no one does — or that these solutions fit everyone’s circumstances. But why not lean into the process of learning to understand your children directly, without unnecessary technological interference? It is good for them, and it is good for you.
It’s not a bad place to start if you are concerned about the decline of empathy in our culture.
Naomi Segal Deitz
Portland, Ore.
