Dohrn Case Puts Focus on Admissions Procedures : Ex-Radical Fights for Bar Status

In her leather motorcycle jacket, marching with the flag of revolution, she was a principal symbol of the Weather Underground in its fight against the Vietnam War and the Establishment.

Now, 16 years later, briefcase in hand, Bernardine Dohrn is seeking to enter the Establishment as a lawyer in a prestigious firm.

Reporters and TV news crews converged on Chicago’s Criminal Court when Dohrn reappeared in 1980, after more than a decade as a fugitive, pleading not guilty to charges stemming from Chicago’s anti-war “Days of Rage” riot in 1969. Before the federal charges against her were dropped because of illegal electronic surveillance, she had been on the FBI’s most wanted list.

Changes Plea to Guilty

Eventually, after plea bargaining, Dohrn changed her plea to guilty of aggravated battery and bail jumping. She was fined $1,500 and placed on probation.

Two years later, she was back in court, this time in New York. As the result of refusing to cooperate with a federal grand jury investigating the robbery of a Brink’s armored truck that left two policemen and a Brink’s guard dead, she served seven months in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.

Now Bernardine Dohrn is 43 years old and the mother of three. Having passed the New York State bar exam last year, she is working as a clerk in the litigation department in the Manhattan offices of Sidley & Austin, a large Chicago firm. Not surprisingly, her application to be admitted to the New York Bar to practice as a lawyer in own right has focused widespread attention on admissions procedures.

Yippie to Yuppie

One of her attorneys, Don H. Reuben, pictures her as someone who has switched from Yippie to Yuppie. “She’s conservative and not perceptibly different from anybody in her age group with her responsibilities,” he said. “ . . . She’s working as a law clerk. She’s raising children and being a wife and law-abiding citizen. Like all people in her age group, she’s a consumer. She is in the market that people are beaming their ads at. She is part of that group, the professional who works and raises children.”

Others picture her differently. During a Character Committee hearing on her application, Lt. Terence McTigue of the New York City Bomb Squad called her a “violent terrorist leader.” The lieutenant said it was up to her to “document she is a good person.”

Dohrn was graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1967. Lawyers familiar with large firms say it is very unusual for someone with an 18-year gap in her legal career to be hired by a firm like Sidley & Austin. One possible explanation, they say, is that Dohrn is married to William Ayers, a former Weather Underground activist, and Ayers’ father is Thomas Ayers, former chairman of Commonwealth Edison and a leading member of Chicago’s Establishment.

The elder Ayers recently headed Chicago’s effort to obtain the 1992 World’s Fair. Sidley & Austin served as lawyers for the World’s Fair Authority. He also serves on the board of the Chicago Tribune Co. Reuben is its general counsel. The firm of another of Dohrn’s lawyers, former U.S. Judge Harold R. Tyler Jr., is counsel to the New York Daily News, a subsidiary of the Tribune Co.

Beyond Redemption

Legal scholars say the controversy over admitting Dohrn to the bar reaches beyond the possible redemption of a 1960s radical, to the standards and procedures courts and bar associations use to certify lawyers.

The requirement that moral character be a key factor in admitting lawyers dates back to the Roman Theodesian Code and to 13th-Century England. Every state bar association requires character certification before a lawyer can practice. Nationwide, fewer than 1% of those who apply are rejected.

Supporters of the present admissions process say the character committees that consider applications from law school graduates help to protect the public and courts, deterring those with obvious shortcomings. They say screening committees are also designed to enhance the public image of the bar and create a climate of shared values within the legal profession.

Critics charge that the admissions process is often conflicting and arbitrary, and that conduct acceptable in some states is unacceptable in others. In Michigan, they say, a man convicted of conspiring to bomb a public building was admitted to the bar, while in North Carolina, one charged with being a peeping Tom was not.

In some jurisdictions, a campus sit-in resulting in a misdemeanor conviction would trigger a character committee investigation. In other sections of the country, committee members well might view the demonstration and arrest as acts of conscience.

‘Babes in the Woods’

Critics also charge that committee members are often interviewing “babes in the woods” and cannot predict how they will function as lawyers. They say the committees are misdirected resources--that greater attention should be placed on disciplining lawyers after they are admitted.

“The Dohrn case exposes to scrutiny the underlying premises of the character system,” said Deborah L. Rhode, associate professor of law at Stanford University, who recently completed a comprehensive survey in the Yale Law Journal of how lawyers are admitted to practice in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

“Most of the people who don’t want Bernardine admitted are concerned about the appearance of justice, not that she will commit a violent act against a client . . . . To admit individuals with her record seems to some members of the profession to denigrate the profession and deprecate its image.

“But the danger with the Dohrn case is it focuses attention on the image . . . . To the extent that the case is seen as a problem of image, it may well end up diverting attention from the more substantial problems of how the system runs.”

Personal Interviews

In New York state, where Dohrn has applied in the 1st Judicial District (Manhattan and the Bronx), all applicants are personally interviewed. Most times, the interviews are perfunctory and discussions of future job prospects take place. The character committee has held two hearings on Dohrn’s application, and she has testified in person.

Applicants also must fill out an extensive questionnaire asking that prior convictions be listed even if they have been expunged from court records. The form asks if the applicant has ever testified or refused to testify before any investigating agency or has been granted immunity. It asks if the candidate was a member of any group or organization advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government.

“Can you conscientiously, and do you affirm that you are without any mental reservation, loyal to and ready to support the Constitution of the United States?” the questionnaire asks.

Critics of Dohrn’s application point to statements by the lawyers now representing her that were cited in January, 1983, by U.S. Judge Gerard L. Goettel when he decided to free Dohrn from the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

Goettel ruled that Dohrn “might have been an unwilling facilitator” of the criminal activity in the Brink’s robbery, but he also referred to affidavits by Reuben and Tyler, who now argue that she should be admitted to the bar.

Described as ‘Intractable’

Both lawyers described Dohrn as a person having “a view of the law and a view of life and her rights and obligations that is myopic, convoluted, unrealistic, childish and inexplicable.” They concluded that “Bernardine is intractable in her views and belief to the point of fanaticism (and) may well perceive herself as a second Joan of Arc now suffering an ordeal that must be endured for the causes she believes in, whatever they might be.”

Tyler declined to be interviewed. Reuben said that Dohrn would not give interviews while her case was before the character committee, but he said that his own view of Dohrn had changed in almost three years, and that “she’s acquired age, perspective, experience and responsibility.”

“It didn’t happen overnight,” Reuben said. “She’s going about the business of living her life in an orderly fashion. Her life revolves around her husband and her children. She is not looking back. She is looking forward.”