It Doesn’t Please the Court : U.S. Justices Threaten Legal Action Against Maverick Lawyer Because of Publication of Arguments in 23 Landmark Cases

Like a lot of lawyers, Peter Irons dreams of someday arguing a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

He concedes, though, that this might not be the best time. “I’m not sure it would be in the best interests of my clients,” he said.

The reason is simple as a poke in the eye. The Supreme Court is extremely vexed at the 53-year-old professor of political science at UC San Diego.

So annoyed is the court at Irons that the justices have taken the extraordinary step of issuing a statement threatening him with legal action. Court watchers say nothing like this has happened since 1906.

The court is angered by what Irons did with an intellectual treasure trove he discovered at the National Archives: audio tape-recordings made by the court of open arguments in 23 landmark cases, including those concerning abortion, the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate tapes, school prayer, affirmative action, flag burning, gay rights, civil rights, school desegregation and a criminal defendant’s right to counsel.

On the tapes, lawyers can be heard pleading their cases and being peppered by questions from the justices, as monumental social issues hang in the balance.

“This is really American history in a form that nobody has ever experienced before,” Irons said. “It’s as if someone suddenly came up with a tape of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.”

As director of UC San Diego’s Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project, which is dedicated to finding innovative ways to teach the Bill of Rights, Irons determined that the tapes had to be made public, not just to a few researchers, but to anyone who wants to hear the court.

The result is a nonprofit venture soon to be available to bookstores nationwide at $75 a copy, “May It Please the Court,” a 370-page book and six 90-minute audiocassettes. The tapes were judiciously edited by Irons and his associate Stephanie Guitton, with narration by Irons.

The problem is that to get access to the tapes from the National Archives, Irons had to sign an agreement that he would not duplicate or distribute the tapes or make them available for broadcast, all of which he has done.

The Supreme Court demands that the archives require all researchers to sign such an agreement, which stems from the court’s pique when CBS News broadcast part of a tape from the Pentagon Papers case.

In a statement issued Aug. 3, the court accused Irons of breaking his agreement despite being warned: “In light of this clear violation of Professor Irons’ contractual commitments, the court is considering what legal remedies may be appropriate.”

Irons questions whether the court has the right to place such severe restrictions on the tapes, which are public property and taken from open sessions. “I’m not agreeing that the agreement is binding,” he said.

As a dedicated confrontationalist, he is not too worried about the court’s fulminations. “It’s like some volcano that’s sputtering,” he said. “You don’t really know if it’s going to erupt.”

A spokeswoman for the court said Friday that the court may have further comment on Irons and the tapes this week. Guesses on what the court might do range from merely issuing a scalding statement to referring the case to the Justice Department for prosecution for breach of contract.

Irons has secured permission from all the lawyers heard on the tapes and several provided book blurbs. Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio), who as a private attorney argued a 1967 case that established the right of citizens to be free from arbitrary “stop and frisk” by police, calls Irons’ efforts “an important educational project.”

Supreme Court scholars are split.

David Currie, law professor at the University of Chicago and author of the two-volume “The Constitution in the Supreme Court,” said he is troubled with the idea of a lawyer breaking an agreement, but that he believes the court should not attempt to restrict the sale or broadcast of the tapes.

“I would have great sympathy with the court’s position if someone was prying into the secret deliberations of the court,” Currie said. “But that is not at all what happened. These are tapes of public proceedings.”

Charles Fried, law professor at Harvard University and solicitor general in the Ronald Reagan Administration, says selling edited tapes will trivialize the court. He notes that transcripts of open court sessions are readily available.

“All this man is doing is trying to make these tapes available in a format that heightens their entertainment value,” Fried said. “I don’t see why that’s necessary.”

So who is this man who has gotten the highest court in America mad at him? He is, by his own definition, a tilter at society’s windmills, a “bleeding heart liberal,” a spirited litigant who is “not very good at compromise.”

His father, a nuclear engineer, quit his job with the Atomic Energy Commission in protest when J. Robert Oppenheimer was denied a security clearance in the 1950s.

“From a very early age, I felt that standing up in the face of what I consider general arrogance by the government is something that needs to be done,” Irons said. “Not a lot of people are willing to volunteer.”

In the 1960s, he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, got arrested “a few times” in civil rights demonstrations, and joined the staff of the United Auto Workers.

He served 2 1/2 years in federal prison as a draft resister during the Vietnam War. His conviction was overturned because he had been targeted by then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover for selective prosecution and later Irons received a pardon from President Gerald Ford, which hangs on the wall of his cluttered office at UC San Diego.

After prison, he earned a doctorate in political science at Boston University and a law degree from Harvard. He taught at Boston College, Boston University and the University of Massachusetts and joined the faculty at UC San Diego in 1982.

Irons was a researcher for Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg’s legal team. He was lead counsel in a successful attempt to overturn the convictions of Japanese-Americans interned during World War II.

He was a national board member with the American Civil Liberties Union--which provided a grant for “May It Please the Court,” as did the Deer Creek Foundation of St. Louis. He is semi-estranged from the San Diego affiliate of the ACLU over the issue of campus speech codes.

Irons finds such codes anathema. He talked the UC San Diego administration out of filing charges against women students who went topless during a march. “My representation involved going over and screaming at the vice chancellor for 10 minutes,” Irons said.

His uncompromising temperament is endearing to some, annoying to others.

“Peter is known for taking very principled views and then adopting them as his own personal moral stance,” said Lewis Wenzell, a San Diego lawyer and former judge who has worked with Irons on ACLU matters. “Having done that, he’s willing to go to jail. That makes for a very determined adversary.”

Being on the university payroll, Wenzell said, “gives Peter the luxury of getting involved in cases that most people who have to work for a living don’t have time for.”

Charles Bird, also a San Diego lawyer and ACLU activist, said of Irons: “Anyone who defines his principles as clearly and intensely as Peter does is bound to be personally controversial in a circumstance where others may see that more ground can be gained by being a bit more flexible.”

Irons displays the same intensity in the classroom.

“I don’t make any pretense in my classes of being neutral on issues,” he said. “I tell people I believe in truth in advertising. I’m a bleeding-heart liberal. I encourage people to argue with me, present the other side, not to be intimidated.”

Irons rates highly on student evaluations. One student wrote that “Irons’ lectures are interesting and he speaks well but he is still a scumbag liberal.” Another wrote: “Irons is God.”

Irons is planning a lawsuit against the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates on behalf of a Mexican-trained doctor who believes he was unfairly accused of cheating. The lawyer for the commission, which is backed by the U.S. medical Establishment, recently left an exasperated voice mail message for Irons asking him to “stop calling my office twice a day.”

Irons is suing the San Diego City Council to force the removal of a cross from public land. Next year, the Earl Warren project plans a symposium on the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, the school desegregation case.

In the meantime, Irons is ready if the Supreme Court wants to get into the legal ring over the book and tape project “May It Please the Court,” which, ironically, is the traditional greeting of deference given to the court by lawyers.

“People say I get too personally involved in my cases, that I’m too confrontational,” Irons said. “My answer is that I don’t usually start these fights.”