NLG: The Legal Fifth Column
By: Jesse Rigsby Friday, April 25, 2003
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG, also "the Guild") embraces every anti-America, anti-capitalist, anti-war, anti-Israel, and "anti-imperialist" cause in vogue among the far left and declares itself "dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of our political and economic system."
If this strikes the reader as a slight hint that the Guild’s underlying ideology is not exactly laissez-faire capitalism, that is because it is not. While the Guild is not officially communist or Marxist, its membership, leadership, past internal struggles, and adopted stances consistently point to an organization whose underlying convictions could best be described as such.
The Guild’s current organizational structure—forty-two local chapters grouped into nine regions—supports both decentralized operations on the regional level and a cohesive plan of attack on the national level. The Guild supports four national projects—the Center for Democratic Communications (CDC), the National Immigration Project, the National Police Accountability Project, and the Maurice and Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice—while twenty-one committees provide the Guild in-depth coverage of specific issues, including the death penalty, racism, sexism, Colombia, Cuba, the Middle East, immigration, illicit drugs, military law, prison law, LGBT ("lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender") affairs, "mass defense," labor and employment, and international affairs.
See our National Lawyers Guild & its Terrorist Network
Outlaws of Amerika:
- Armed Commandos of Liberation (CAL)
- Armed Revolutionary Independence Movement (MIRA)
- Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN)
- Machete-Wielders(Boricua Popular Army [EPB])
- Armed Forces of Popular Resistance (FARP)
- Organization of Volunteers for the Puerto Rico Revolution (OVRP)
- Weather Underground (WUO)
- Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC)
- George Jackson Brigade (GJB)
- Black Liberation Army (BLA)
Additionally, more than forty law schools across the U.S. have student Guild chapters, lending the respectability of their institutions to the far left organization. In fact, among the handful of law schools generally considered the most prestigious, only those at Harvard, Duke, and the University of Chicago do not sponsor Guild chapters.
The National Lawyers Guild was founded during the Great Depression as a pro-New Deal, progressive alternative to the segregated and comparatively conservative American Bar Association (ABA). Although many have alleged that the Communist International (Comintern) spearheaded the Guild’s creation, it is probably mistaken to attribute a sinister purpose to the Guild’s earliest existence. There were elements within the early Guild that were dedicated communist revolutionaries, without a doubt, but these were by no means the only actors within the fledgling organization: future Supreme Court Justices, New Deal supporters, civil libertarians, and other liberals were among its earliest members.
Early on, however, the National Lawyers Guild underwent an episode of internal dissension that profoundly affected its future. At the organization’s Third Annual Convention, the Guild’s National Executive Board refused to adopt an amendment to the NLG constitution opposing dictatorship and supporting democracy after communist lawyers complained that it was "divisive." Many comparatively moderate Guild members rightly regarded this as ominous and quit the Guild, causing it to undergo a variation on the Darwinian imperative "survival of the fittest": "survival of the most leftist."
World War II provided a bit of relief to the Guild’s internal difficulties, ironically enough. After the war ended, the Guild opposed U.S. anti-communist policies, including the Marshall Plan, loyalty oaths, and a bill that would allow the U.S. Attorney General to list organizations as "Communist political organizations" and "Communist fronts." Guild members represented the infamous "Hollywood 10" (and would later represent the Rosenbergs). The Guild’s Board reluctantly issued a statement simultaneously supporting the U.N. military campaign against North Korea while upbraiding U.S. foreign policy, including its "blind opposition to Communism which ignores the economic, social, and political problems of the ordinary people of the world who are struggling to obtain a better lot in life."[1]
The Guild’s politics aroused the suspicions of many, including the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which issued its pithily entitled "Report on the National Lawyers Guild: Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party" in 1950 (PDF). The report noted, among other things, that the Guild consistently opposed anti-communist legislation, and it matter-of-factly accused the Guild of attacking "the Federal Bureau of Investigation [as] part of an overall Communist strategy aimed at weakening our nation’s defenses against the international Communist conspiracy." [2] The report recommended that Guild members be barred from federal employment, and that the ABA consider whether it should permit its members to belong to the Guild in light of the organization’s "subversive" character.
Even if the HUAC charges were completely baseless (which they probably were not), the report had a drastic effect on the Guild, initiating another round of "survival of the most leftist"-style political Darwinism. All but the most committed (and leftwing) Guild members thought twice about continuing to associate with the "Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party," and large numbers of more moderate Guild members (over 2,000 out of a total Guild membership of 4,000) consequently resigned (a 1961 report by the Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities in California captures the dynamic well). Decimated by the HUAC report, and viewed by many non-members with deep distrust, the Guild survived the 1950s by limiting the scope of its projects and otherwise concentrating on "bread-and-butter" issues related to the practice of law.
As the 1960s began, the Guild began to focus much of its efforts on fighting for civil rights for black Americans. Part of the reason for the Guild’s newfound emphasis was pure opportunism: a means of acquiring new membership, both black and white (interestingly, one of the Guild’s black members was elected to Congress in 1964: John Conyers, one of the more liberal Representatives currently serving in the House). The Guild defended rioters and others involved in civil unrest as the 1960s progressed, and "helped" the U.S. war effort in Vietnam by encouraging young men to become draft evaders and then defending them.
Guild lawyers were active in defending such "movement" participants as "demonstrators" arrested during the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention riots and members of the militant Black Panther Party in their many run-ins with law enforcement. Continue reading>> FrontPage
