Joe Lieberman reflects on 50 years in regulation and politics, ‘recounts’ Bush v. Gore

I convey to Joe Lieberman that I want to start out by taking part in “Joe Lieberman trivia.” The former longtime senator from Connecticut laughs. He’s up for it.

In 1968, Joseph I. Lieberman was a second-12 months law firm. He and two colleagues at New Haven’s Wiggin & Dana, represented a social gathering right before the U.S. District Courtroom for the District of Connecticut. It led to a printed opinion. “Senator, can you identify that circumstance?”

“I have no thought,” Lieberman suggests, after pondering it for a instant.

I change around the card. The Wiggin & Dana trio represented Playboy in a breach of contract motion. The magazine publisher experienced agreed to ship one particular of its playmates to a men’s clothes retailer in Bridgeport for a promotional occasion. The store owner paid the expected $136.50. But the bunny-clad visitor was a no-clearly show. The retailer sued. Workforce Lieberman was not prosperous in possessing the grievance dismissed primarily based on absence of particular jurisdiction.

“I have zero recollection of that,” Lieberman states, guessing that his involvement was minimal to some analysis on the scenario, after I tell him the names of his co-counsel.

“I believe I have a fairly very good memory,” he claims. And, incorporating with amusement: “You’d think I’d remember that.”

For the duration of an hourlong cellphone interview from his residence in the Riverdale area of the Bronx, Lieberman proved his point, demonstrating a spectacular recall of situations in his five-ten years vocation as a law firm and politician. And in a single circumstance, he went back even more. The story was historical background. But it presents a lesson for the legal career nowadays.

At the time of our dialogue, President Donald Trump has lawsuits pending in numerous courts alleging fraud and other voting irregularities in this year’s presidential election. Lieberman has some familiarity with litigation of this form.

Recounting a landmark circumstance

I question the 78-12 months-outdated previous 2000 Democratic nominee for vice president about his position in Bush v. Gore—the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision over the counting of Florida’s votes. The Florida Supreme Court had requested a statewide recount to handle hundreds of votes exactly where the voter’s desire could not be determined.

The U.S. Supreme Court halted the recount on equal defense grounds: There was no uniform typical for the state’s counties to identify the voter’s selection. The ruling from the nation’s top rated court docket set the phase for the election of George W. Bush. Given his qualifications as a law firm, was Lieberman more than just a litigant in a single of the most vital lawsuits of all-time?

He tells me he didn’t give tactical assistance to the attorneys mounting the authorized troubles. Instead, Lieberman claims, he was “engaged” in “legal method decisions” about the campaign’s program of action.

“I’ll give you a minor anecdote,” he features. On the Saturday following Election Day, Lieberman attended a conference at Vice President Gore’s home. Various marketing campaign officers had been existing, and decisions have been heading to be manufactured around which lawsuits to go after over the undecided election.

Owing to an approach that he claims he made as Connecticut Lawyer General in the 1980s, Lieberman tells me that he advocated for filing a vast array of authorized steps. The candidate’s perspective was that “if you feel you have a result in of motion that has a affordable foundation to it—although you are clearly not certain if you can encourage the decide or judges or jury—take it to court. That’s what our procedure offers us the suitable to do. Enable the decide determine. That is what I argued.”

But not everyone close to the table was on board with this sort of an aggressive line of assault. Lieberman reveals that through a break, an attendee pulled him apart and cautioned him to tread flippantly. The unsolicited tips: “Be thorough. You and Al Gore are young men and have a wonderful long term in advance of you. Really do not be so litigious listed here that persons imagine you are equally sore losers.”

Lieberman states he appeared at the particular person and responded, incredulously: “I can not believe that you are saying this. This is seriously vital. I would not say to file baseless lawsuits. But a range of these have a basis.”

“Maybe I [won the argument] about the edges a bit with some of the lawsuits,” Lieberman concludes. “But not all the lawsuits that I imagined have been plausible, and should really be submitted, have been filed.”

On the at this time pending election litigation, Lieberman says: “You have the right to go to court docket. But at some stage, this has to end for the excellent of the region.” This wondering, he states, was at the heart of Gore’s choice to stop the election litigation following SCOTUS spoke, despite other avenues of pursuit perhaps becoming available to the marketing campaign.

I’m curious if people today continue to occur up to Lieberman to talk about the 2000 election. “They do,” the previous candidate tells me, normally wanting to communicate about how points may perhaps have been diverse, such as on weather change and the war in Iraq.

Daily life just after the Senate

Lieberman remaining the Senate in 2013 following 24 several years. In spite of extra than a ten years in private follow, and 6 several years as Connecticut’s attorney general, the Yale Regulation College graduate selected not to serve on the Judiciary Committee. He credits his conclusion to guidance he bought early on from a extra seasoned colleague: “It’s just 1 of the extra partisan, ideologically divided committees. … You are not heading to take pleasure in it. You can actually make a variation on the atmosphere committee.”

“Judiciary is a partisan committee?” I reply.

Lieberman laughs. “How ‘bout that?”

Due to the fact departing the world’s most exclusive club, Lieberman has been senior counsel at Kasowitz Benson Torres in the firm’s Manhattan workplace.

“I knew I preferred to go back again to working towards legislation,” he says. “I dreamed of remaining in the Senate when I was more youthful. I was blessed sufficient to live the dream. But I under no circumstances needed to end my life there. I desired yet another chapter.”

He joined the business to assistance it set up a federal government affairs exercise and offers tips on a wide variety of troubles, which includes public policy, regulatory, national security and environmental. He also signifies clientele in inside and impartial investigations.

Lieberman tells me he spoke to about 10 corporations when choosing where by to follow. Oddly, it appears to be the man who was a handful of hanging chads away from being a Democratic vice president landed at the firm whose founder, Marc Kasowitz, is well-known for his illustration of Donald Trump, both prior to and during his time in the White House.

Lieberman claims he at times will get requested if that is not comfortable. Not at all, he tells me. “I’m senior counsel. He’s accomplishing his thing. I’m performing mine.”

A Yale person and a 60-12 months-old lesson

In 1963, a university student team at Yale University invited George Wallace to talk on campus. The university’s president, Kingman Brewster Jr., uninvited the Alabama governor recognised for his segregationist views and initiatives to protect against the enrollment of Black pupils at the University of Alabama.

At the time, Lieberman was a Yale undergraduate and served as chairman (equivalent of editor-in-main) of the school’s newspaper, the Yale Daily Information. He penned an editorial criticizing the administration’s final decision to preserve Wallace off the campus.

“We’re a college,” Lieberman suggests, detailing his reasoning to me. “And we have to be open to concepts, even ones that are as repulsive to me as Wallace’s.”

The previous editor connects that occasion from practically 60 a long time ago to nowadays. “I do assume about that own working experience really frequently when I see speakers of 1 ideology or a further currently being shouted down by learners and pressured out. It is wrong. It’s not what the university is meant to be. Go pay attention to them and argue with them. But they are not joyful with that.”

The Wallace incident provides yet another existing-day parallel—this 1 for lawyers.

Lieberman considered Brewster’s conclusion to continue to keep Wallace out was effected by the mayor of New Haven, who was “worried that there was heading to be civil unrest.” To Lieberman, that was not a explanation to keep Wallace out. He didn’t imagine any disturbances would go further than the college. But if they did, he tells me, “that’s why the law enforcement are there.”

That the possibility of dissent led the Yale president to abandon a main mission of a university seems acquainted. These days, some attorneys are facing general public scorn and even threats to their safety for their pursuit of a elementary principle of their very own profession—representation of unpopular consumers.

Some lawyers symbolizing President Trump or these aligned with him in submit-election litigation have witnessed substantial-scale protests outdoors their business office windows. Earlier this yr attorneys symbolizing purchasers found hostile to housing rights have faced vandalism to their house or business.

There is nothing new about lawyers having heat for representing unpopular shoppers and will cause. But, traditionally, those people who identified it distasteful permit it go at that—just section of the method. But this feels distinctive. Now, these symbolizing lightning-rod clientele operates the risk of an world wide web and social media lambasting, with doable attendant organization penalties. Absolutely this will result in some lawyers to abandon the profession’s time-honored tradition—everyone is entitled to representation—out of the dread of the potential repercussions.

To a once 21-12 months-outdated with the conviction to publicly get in touch with out the president of Yale College for not making it possible for an avowed segregationist to talk on campus, this is a worrisome development for attorneys.

“The future stage from the corrosive partisanship that has contaminated our politics,” Lieberman describes, “involves a self-righteousness—‘I’m so appropriate that I don’t treatment about the strategy that this is a rule-of-regulation region, and we do the job out our disputes in courtroom.’

“Of study course legal professionals signify clients that they could not entirely agree with,” Lieberman states, “but to go all over that system of regulation, which has made us the unique country we are, and to punish lawyers who are symbolizing purchasers who might be controversial is actually a quite harmful advancement and one that should to be resisted.”

For Joe Lieberman, it has been a very long profession loaded with accomplishments—and one gigantic what-could-have-been. “I don’t forget the 2000 election much more than the Playboy circumstance,” he states, laughing.

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Randy Maniloff is an attorney at White and Williams in Philadelphia and an adjunct professor at the Temple University Beasley Faculty of Legislation. He operates the web-site CoverageOpinions.facts.