Far-Left Leaders Rue Stewart Conviction

Attorney Lynne Stewart's conviction is a blow to the far-left legal community that lionized her, but will matter little to the mainstream Democrats whose principles and platform she rejected long ago, several observers of the case said yesterday.

Moreover, although Stewart was representing clients during her trial, they had been made to acknowledge in open court that they understood the risks associated with retaining a lawyer under indictment. Given her conviction, Stewart faces automatic disbarment.

Stewart's conviction was a shock to one leader of the so-called progressive movement, the editor of The Progressive, Matthew Rothschild, who said she was a popular figure because of her willingness "to take on the cases that no other lawyer was willing to touch." Mr. Rothschild said her conviction would leave a "hole where someone brave had been." He declined to comment on the merits of her case.

A press release from the National Lawyer's Guild, a far-left legal advocacy group based in Manhattan, struck an outraged tone. The president, Michael Avery, an associate professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, said Stewart was nothing more than a "target of the U.S. Department of Justice." He blamed her indictment in November 2003 on the fact that she represented politically unpopular individuals. He said the guild, long accused of being close to the former Soviet Union by conservative historians, will continue to stand by Stewart.

As to whether the prosecution would be felt in more mainstream Democratic Party circles, a Nation magazine and MSNBC.com columnist, Eric Alterman, replied, "Hell, no." Mr. Alterman said no friends or contacts in liberal circles - "and pretty much everyone I'm friends with is a liberal," he assured The New York Sun - had even mentioned the case. However, he said he expects that "right-wing media" would attempt to connect the case to liberals and liberalism.

With respect to the practice of law, especially the ability of a lawyer to forcefully advocate for a client, Stewart's conviction will also have little effect, the director of Northwestern University's School of Law's program in Advocacy and Professional Responsibility, professor Steven Lubet, said. "No ethical lawyer would do what she did in terms of crossing a clear legal line."