Many of the best changes in this country were helped along by lawyers - copyright, civil rights, civil society, citizen engagement, free speech. Lawyers also take on pro bono projects as a way to give back to the community and use their education and skills for whatever good they are most attracted to. I know some great lawyers and have admired their activism and charity. Where would our country be without lawyers? In the dark ages.

Here's a piece in the WAPO about a judge doing the right thing in court against Bank of America and those stinging CEO bonuses:

"Most judges, of course, have long since come to accept and even embrace such ambiguities, which to those outside the legal system may seem absurd. They embrace the legal notion of immaculate conception, which holds that there can be corporate wrongdoing without there necessarily being any wrongdoers. They hold sacrosanct the attorney-client privilege, particularly when it protects the reputation and livelihood of other lawyers. They understand that their job is not to get to the bottom of things, only to the bottom of their own docket.

But not Jed Rakoff. Despite decades on the bench, he's still naive enough to believe that the laws mean what they say, and that just because everyone does it doesn't mean it's right. He refuses to allow his court to be used to burnish the public reputations of the parties, especially when it comes at the expense of the truth. He cares about outcomes more than process.

Come to think of it, maybe Rakoff is exactly the kind of activist judge we need more of, not less."

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