A Plea for Civility

Disrupting courtroom decorum is an occasional tactic of defendants and even defense lawyers willing to risk violating the canons of their profession. Often with the help of an intemperate judge, they manage to raise a legal ruckus that may very well provoke a mistrial or a judicial error likely to be reversed on appeal. Though the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet laid down rules for obstreperous lawyers, it held last year that a judge has broad powers in dealing with unruly defendants. He can have them gagged or bound, expelled from his courtroom or cited for contempt. For ill-mannered lawyers, though, a judge's contempt power has remained just about the only censure. And as in the conspiracy trial of the Chicago Seven, a few flamboyant attorneys have not hesitated to challenge it.

Those who advocate sterner rules to regulate a lawyer's courtroom actions found a ready and powerful ally last week. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, in an address to 1,500 lawyers, judges and law professors at the American Law Institute meeting in Washington, D.C., called for a return to civility in the legal profession. He urged stronger disciplinary measures by the profession itself, for the "tiny fragment" of lawyers who employ more adrenaline than judgment in court (see box). He also criticized the actions of some journalists and students who, he maintained, contributed to the rising swell of public incivility. As TIME Washington Correspondent Dean Fischer reported last week, the reasons for Chief Justice Burger's impassioned appeal run deep:

"Like a mirror, the speech was a reflection of the man. It showed clearly the standards of civility that the Chief Justice maintains in both his public and private life.

"He worries about the lack of restraint in a divided and contentious nation. So much so, in fact, that he has chosen to use the prestige of his high office to speak out on the troubling issues that transcend politics. He derives much of his inspiration from American history, and quotes approvingly from Thomas Jefferson's manual of decorum, which urged restraint on the uninhibited behavior of colonial legislators.

"While pruning roses in the garden of his six-acre Virginia estate, Burger ponders the implications of the past for the present and the future. When he saw the play 1776 recently, he was struck by the vigor and passion of the founding fathers as they debated the course of the new nation. But he was also impressed by 'the underlying calm of those remarkable men' as they grappled with the monumental task of writing a Constitution in the dust and grime and heat of Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.

"The Chief Justice is a daily practitioner of the restraint he urges on others. There are robust arguments among the Justices of the Supreme Court and sharp disagreements that seem to defy reconciliation. But underlying the differences is an atmosphere of cordiality that is rooted in mutual respect. It enables Burger and William O. Douglas--poles apart philosophically--to remain close friends even though they are infrequent judicial allies. It is that kind of civility that Warren Burger counsels for the nation."

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