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03/17/2004: "Proof that not all lawyers are bad"

All joking aside, there are plenty of good lawyers–people who take their jobs, and the law seriously. One such is Barry Adamson, from Lake Oswego, Oregon, who in today's Oregonian takes on the lunacy driving Multnomah County to nullify state marriage law:

A cting with a hysterical dispatch so utterly foreign to local government, Multnomah County unilaterally pronounced a state law–not, mind you, merely a county ordinance–"unconstitutional" and, worse still, decided to not just ignore it but to authorize governmental conduct squarely contrary to the law. Moron that I must be, I had always understood that, at least within this country's legal framework, only the courts have been empowered to render those kinds of determinations. At least the courts have long declared just that.

Thus, within our system of laws it remains the obligation of governmental entities to enforce and uphold the laws our legislators enact. But not for Multnomah County, which believes that it alone may declare those state laws by which it will abide. In the light of reality that never seems to shine on Multnomah County, that kind of anarchistic blather at least serves to inform the public of the all-too-apparent ineptitude of those who enable such absurdity. At least the county stands in celebrated company. Its maniacal defiance of the law mirrors Mississippi's stance when James Meredith attempted to enroll at the University of Mississippi in 1962. Gov. Ross Barnett informed all who would listen that Mississippi alone would determine what laws it would observe, and that it would darn well refuse to abide by any federal law that might otherwise compel it to enroll Meredith. Who can forget President Kennedy's common-sense retort: "Americans are free, in short, to disagree with the law but not to disobey it." Except, apparently, for Multnomah County.

Mr. Adamson ends his piece by asking the rhetorical question, "Who's in charge in this state?" The answer: a collection of pre-adolescents who were never told "no" by their parents, and who are determined not to take "no" for an answer from anyone–not even the law.