Students Reflect on Justice and Guilt

In this clip, Phillip Wells, Doug Cutherbertson, Cheryl Thill and my colleague, Prof. Gemma Solimene, offer reflections on the question that people I have just met at cocktail parties most commonly ask me when I tell them I am a criminal defense lawyer - how can you defend those people.  I think people usually mean, how can we defend people accused of crimes, many of whom are, in fact, guilty?   

Although many of us worried about that question when we first started doing the work, in my case many years ago, almost every criminal defense practitioner soon learns that clients are people in crisis, who have lots of other people working against their interests.  For some of us, there is the thrill of being that person's only partisan; others are motivated by a desire to buck the authority of government officials.  I have always been moved by the very human needs of the person in front of me. 

I agree with Phillip.  Everyone deserves an advocate. I suppose some may speculate on the psychological factors that push some of us toward defense work  and some of us toward prosecution, but whatever gives rise to those differences, the system depends on vigorous lawyers on both sides.  I think most people understand that intellectually, but when they first meet a criminal defense lawyer, their hearts often ask - how can you defend those people - and it is important for those of us who do the work to remember how the experience changes us.

-- Ian Weinstein

Fordham, Law School, Clinical Legal Education, Law Clinic, Pro Bono Work, Legal Education, Legal Pedagogy, Teaching Law, Student Lawyers, Law Student

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