Word: kunstler
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When Columbia University's beleaguered officials resorted to a court injunction last month to clear the admissions office of student demonstrators, college administrators around the U.S. took notice. "The university has finally come up with a very effective-and invidious-device," said William Kunstler, a lawyer for the students. At least a dozen schools wrote to Columbia for details. "From the university's point of view, the technique is perfect," said L. D. Nachman, a political theorist at the City University of New York. "It will work. It really will work...
...special counsel for Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Kunstler sprang many a demonstrator from Southern jails. Later, he argued the celebrated case that declared de facto school segregation in Washington, B.C., unconstitutional. Though he won on the main point, Kunstler could not get the judge to agree to a more radical proposal. He asked that the court order the Government to force a merger of schools in Washington with those in the white suburbs of Maryland and Virginia...
...Kunstler calls himself a "people's lawyer," and in court he plays the part for all it is worth, occasionally risking contempt of court. Defending nine Catholic draft-record burners in Baltimore, Kunstler advised the jury to ignore the judge's charge to them. Protesting the high bail for another Catholic group charged with the same crime in Milwaukee, Kunstler attacked the judge: "I don't think Your Honor will make his career on the bench with heavy bail. It makes the law look ridiculous...
...Kunstler's critics say that his briefs can be careless and his arguments farfetched. For example, he was a leading member of the team of lawyers who last summer asked a federal court to prevent Columbia University from disciplining its own campus demonstrators. U.S. District Judge Marvin Frankel described the team's arguments as "at best useless and at worst deeply pernicious nonsense in courts...
...Kunstler's admirers, many of them highly respected lawyers, note that what is nonsense today often makes sense tomorrow. "My impression is that the most creative things in the law usually sound unacceptable and unlikely," says Professor Leroy Clark of New York University Law School. "This is the creative side of Kunstler. He comes up with things that make you think...