What is feminist hero Susan Estrich doing representing Roger Ailes?

[DonViejo]

As a rising feminist legal scholar, Susan Estrich once wrote this in the Stanford Law Review:

“It should be obvious that the system already contains serious disincentives to women filing sexual harassment complaints. Start with embarrassment, loss of privacy, and sometimes shame. If the woman remains employed, she faces the prospect that her harasser and others will make her life impossible. If she has quit or been fired . . . the danger is that she will be branded a troublemaker, and find it difficult to find another job.”

That was in 1991. Lately, some people are wondering whether Estrich, a pioneering advocate for women’s legal rights, has changed her mind.

Last month, a minor shock wave coursed through feminist and legal circles when Estrich’s name surfaced in an unexpected context: As the new defense co-counsel to Roger Ailes, the founder and former chief executive of the Fox News Channel.

Ailes has been accused of harassment in a lawsuit brought by Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox host who claims he dangled advancement in exchange for sex. Some two dozen women have since contacted Carlson’s lawyer to offer their accounts of Ailes’s allegedly predatory behavior stretching over decades. The accusations, playing out amid an avalanche of unfavorable media attention, have already led to Ailes’s resignation at Fox.

-snip-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/feminist-hero-susan-estrich-fought-sexual-harassment-but-now-represents-roger-ailes-is-she-selling-out-or-standing-up/2016/08/04/904c22ce-5810-11e6-9aee-8075993d73a2_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

[Botany]

1. What is feminist hero Susan Estrich doing representing Roger Ailes?

Getting lots of money. She is an attorney.

[geek tragedy]

2. private bar attorneys are rarely heroic nt

[jehop61]

3. Under our legal system

EVERYONE has the right to legal representation.

[Recursion]

4. Fulfilling the obligation of an attorney to defend her client with zeal

That's the only way the system works.

[beachbum bob]

5. to those who can write the BIG check

....so even "principled people" can easily be bought with enough zeros in the check....lol....kinda shoots their principles down

[malthaussen]

6. Guess that makes John Adams a mercenary who can be bought then.

Since he is the lawyer who defended the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre -- and got most of them off.

"The Part I took in Defence of Cptn. Preston and the Soldiers, procured me Anxiety, and Obloquy enough. It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country."


-- Mal

[treestar]

7. He has only been accused

and she may be an expert in that field of law. There is something in the ethics rules about unpopular causes, too. Lawyers should not refuse to represent people because they've already determined they are guilty. Some people are unpopular, but they too should only be convicted of crimes where there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The right to counsel should not be cut off because one is unpopular.

I recall a flap somewhere over a female lawyer who did family law and would only represent women. The law is to be applied to a case, not a pre-existing prejudice about who must be right.

[jcgoldie]

8. I would say making bank

[snooper2]

9. Round $1000 an hour or so?

[SharonClark]

10. Don't know if this is still current information...

Estrich appears frequently on Fox News as a legal and political analyst, and has also substituted for Alan Colmes on the debate show Hannity & Colmes. She writes regular articles for the conservative website NewsMax, for which she is a pundit.

From the linked WP article "“The man described by the media is simply not the man I know,” she wrote in an exchange of emails last week. “I don’t think anyone in the business has done more to promote the careers of women than Roger.”

She has a lot different idea of 'promoting the careers of women" than most feminists do. And to say "The man described by the media is simply not the man I know" is the last defense when you have no honest defense.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

11. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ NT