State Bar Board Rejects Easing of System Putting Damper on Debates

Attempting to minimize politically inflammatory debates that have angered state legislators, the Board of Governors of the State Bar of California refused Friday to make it easier for lawyers to bring controversial resolutions up for a vote at their annual statewide meeting.

“We have a problem in Sacramento and you can’t do this without thinking of the consequences,” President-elect P. Terry Anderlini cautioned the 24-member board that governs the state’s 105,000 lawyers.

“This is not the time to make this change,” he said. “What you would do if you vote for this is put the whole unified Bar in jeopardy next year.”

Controls Finances

The Legislature controls the Bar’s purse strings through an annual bill authorizing it to collect dues from attorneys to finance its work in admitting lawyers to practice, disciplining them and working to improve the justice system.

The Bar has been sensitive to legislators’ view of its activities since 1985, when the Assembly Republican Caucus led by Pat Nolan (R-Glendale) held up the dues measure until the Legislature adjourned. (The bill was subsequently passed in January, 1986, after then-Bar President David Heilbron had appealed to lawyers to pay dues voluntarily to keep the Bar financially afloat.)

Besides criticizing the Bar’s discipline system as soft and slow, conservative legislators also voiced strong disapproval of all “political” activities--particularly resolutions such as those on keeping the United States out of Nicaragua or legalizing marijuana, that had been brought up at annual meetings of the Bar’s Conference of Delegates.

The conference is made up of representatives of voluntary bar associations, such as the 19,000-member Los Angeles County Bar Assn., and has no power to change laws or govern attorneys. Its resolutions merely express opinions.

Bring Civil Suit

Nolan and others also brought a civil suit that is now before the state Supreme Court and that has produced an appellate court ruling that the Bar must limit the “purview” of its lobbying and debates to matters affecting the justice system.

Sensitive to the legislators’ disapproval, the Board of Governors last year established a system to curtail political resolutions by instructing the executive committee to eliminate any proposal that was “beyond purview.”

The full conference was allowed to override that decision by a two-thirds vote.

At last year’s annual meeting in Monterey, six proposed resolutions were eliminated as too political. Two, including one on Nicaragua, died without action; four were called up for an override vote, and two passed the two-thirds requirement for consideration.

But forcing the delegates to use the two-thirds majority, argued bar association leaders from across the state, was insulting to the lawyers.

“The conference is not a wayward body intent upon embarrassing the State Bar or ignoring the views of the members of the State Bar,” John T. Hansen stated in a written argument urging the governors to test the conference’s responsibility by permitting the simple majority override for this year’s meeting as a test.

‘Makes Us Feel Childish’

Claire Van Dam of the Beverly Hills Bar Assn. said that requiring a two-thirds vote to override the conference’s executive committee “is insulting and makes us feel childish. . . . “

“The Legislature has told us to get out of politics,” countered H. Kenneth Norian, a non-lawyer who is the public representative on the Board of Governors. “One of the ways to keep this problem down is to make a two-thirds majority rule. Then if some social problem is so overwhelming that they must bring it up, they can.”

The Bar dues bill, providing for collection of up to $275 from veteran lawyers in 1988, with two-thirds of the budget, or more than $16 million, devoted to disciplinary procedures, passed the Senate on a 37-3 vote and the Assembly by 51 to 26 in the waning days of the session. The governor is expected to sign it.

But Anderlini warned that legislators are still scrutinizing Bar activities and could resurrect a 1985 proposal to split the “unified” Bar by placing its discipline function under an independent state agency, or could put the Bar out of business by refusing to pass a dues measure next year.

“Politics are involved here,” Anderlini warned his colleagues. The proposal for a simple majority override was defeated 12 to 8 by the Board of Governors.

140 Resolutions

The Conference of Delegates, which meets today through Monday, will consider 140 resolutions, mostly concerning changes in state laws about court or legal procedures. The Beverly Hills Bar Assn. has proposed a resolution advocating changes in California’s “right-to-die” law clearly enabling terminal patients to hasten their death by refusing or halting heroic medical measures.

Eight proposed resolutions were rejected by the executive committee of the conference as “beyond purview” or encompassing subjects not related to the justice system.

They included the perennial resolution to censure U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III proposed by the San Francisco chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. The authors intend to ask the full conference to override the committee and bring the resolution to the floor.

Other rejected resolutions included requiring sex education in schools, standardizing labels in children’s clothing, exempting homeless people from criminal trespass laws when shelters are unavailable and permitting government employees to reduce their work hours voluntarily.

More than 2,500 attorneys are expected to attend the four-day annual meeting at Century Plaza Hotel.