NOT AFTER CITIZENS UNITED (via The Mother Judd):

A Legal Battle: Online Attitude vs. Rules of the Bar (JOHN SCHWARTZ, 9/14/09, NY Times)

“When you become an officer of the court, you lose the full ability to criticize the court,” said Michael Downey, who teaches legal ethics at the Washington University law school.

And with thousands of blogs and so many lawyers online, legal ethics experts say that collisions between the freewheeling ways of the Internet and the tight boundaries of legal discourse are inevitable — whether they result in damaged careers or simply raise eyebrows.

Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University Law School, sees many more missteps in the future, as young people who grew up with Facebook and other social media enter a profession governed by centuries of legal tradition.

Given the Right's newfound free speech absolutism, such professional restrictions are obviously just as unenforceable as legislative restrictions on corporations.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 13, 2009 9:38 AM