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MasonCantrellFirstEssay 3 - 27 Apr 2025 - Main.EbenMoglen
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| | | When considering the law and its speakers, individuals often assign an unwarranted reverence and distinction. The respect for lawyers and judges, while rooted in tradition, can obscure the reality that the law is frequently used to perpetuate inequalities, rather than serving as an instrument for fairness or an expression of enlightened values. Such high regard for the law and the legal profession overlooks its role in reinforcing systems of social control and economic disparity, rather than challenging them. | |
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There is no reason a priori for disrespecting the speakers of a language because one doesn'r approve of what is said in it, or even of what they specifically say. Would I have higher regard for English if it were only spoken by rebels and never by rulers? Did these sentences not seem illogical to you when you reread them? Or are you judging your own writing by the same standard, and considering it better to the extent that it is politically to your taste?
| | | Steve Donziger Versus a Legal System Bent to Corporate Will
The case of Steve Donziger exemplifies these dynamics, highlighting how the legal system can be manipulated to protect powerful interests rather than pursue justice. Donziger, an environmental lawyer who played a key role in the effort to hold Chevron (then Texaco, pre-merge) accountable for one of the world’s worst environmental disasters, has become a symbol of the power imbalance inherent in the legal system. From 1964 to 1992, Texaco’s operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon resulted in the contamination of vast swaths of land, causing severe health problems for indigenous communities. After years of litigation, an Ecuadorian court ruled against Chevron in 2011, demanding nearly $10 billion in damages. Despite this ruling, Chevron refused to comply, moving its assets out of Ecuador to avoid paying. To this day, Chevron has not paid any damages or carried out a meaningful clean-up effort. | | | Donziger recently ran an unsuccessful campaign to be pardoned by President Biden. His supporters included 34 members of Congress, 68 Nobel Prize Laureates, and various organizations, including Amnesty International, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Although Biden’s son received a golden ticket, President Biden refused to pardon Donziger, giving a tacit seal of approval to Chevron’s unprecedented tirade of retaliation. | |
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Refusal of a pardon is not approval of a prosecution.
| | | Takeaways | | | Donziger’s experience reveals the dangers of an over-reverence for legal institutions and the practitioners who uphold them, as well as the insidious role that power and wealth play in shaping legal outcomes. In reflecting on Donziger's fight, we must ask ourselves whether it is possible to reconcile our legal system’s potential to serve justice with its frequent role in perpetuating systemic inequality. A true theory of social action requires not just understanding the law, but also critically examining the forces that shape it, and seeking ways to ensure that it is used as a tool for equity, not oppression. | |
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I don't think you intend the draft to be taken seriously as a defense of Donziger. That would require an actual interaction with the evidence, which is the one element missing. There is of course no logical inconsistency in believing that he fought a long and complex campaign in the course of which he committed serious offenses (presumably from generally good motives) for which he was relentlessly pursued and against which he defended himself with characteristic doggedness and self-destructive competence. I have plenty of views about Lew Kaplan, as pretty much any lawyer who has practiced in his court does. His view of "conflict of interest" isn't mine, as I know from matters having nothing whatever to do with Donziger or Chevron, and having once upon a time encouraged a client of mine to pay a great deal of money to one of New York City's most prominent lawyers for the purpose of goading him, I have also a pretty good idea how risky annoying him can be. I have many friends and colleagues among Donziger's crowd of supporters, and I sympathize with their wishes. But attempting to caricature Judge Kaplan as either corrupt or legally slipshod is preposterous. Donziger built a coffin for himself and Kaplan most definitely and superlatively nailed him into it.
So what we have here is a fable, a story about how because the law is imperfect and its custodians are corruptible, the bad guys win in the end. There is purpose, not to mention some important truth, in fables. History is something else, but it needn't be your genre.
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