Huffington Post blogger Kent Greenfield writes that the message delivered by US Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey to Boston College Law School graduates May 22nd "was essentially a call to the avoidance of responsibility. I only hope our students did not take the message to heart."
Excerpts from "Mukasey's Defense of Professional Irresponsibility" :
Besides defending overly aggressive DOJ attorneys, Mukasey's second lesson for our graduates was more subtle but just as distressing. The task of a government lawyer, indeed any lawyer, is to "do law." Lawyers must give a "close reading" and "critical analysis" of text, and to "tune out" the "white noise" of criticism and second-guessing. He urged our graduates to learn to filter out their own moral and political views when they "do law," so they can "advise clients that the law permits them to take actions that you may find imprudent, or even wrong"...
What I wish our graduates had heard from the nation's leading attorney was the importance of personal responsibility for not only the technical part of lawyering but the moral side as well.
Read full blog at http://tinyurl.com/56ue76 .
