James M. Redwine

Abigail Adams

Pro Bono Publico

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For the public good. We rarely take note of how much many people do for free. We just accept, and even expect, such civic minded persons as clergy people, medical personnel, fire and rescue workers and numerous other generous citizens to furnish our society with essential services. Who supports the schools, the religious institutions, civic organizations and countless, often nameless, beneficial causes? We know innumerable important services must get rendered but they are often given without fanfare and without recognition. What we do know is our lives are made better by a whole lot of people who owe us nothing and receive just that.

One of the most thankless public service groups is attorneys who take on unpopular people or causes. John Adams set the bar for putting right above his and his family’s personal interest in 1770 when, as a prominent lawyer and leader of the Colonials’ cause against England, he represented the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. A crowd of Colonial protesters was fired upon resulting in five Americans being killed and six more wounded, the most famous of whom was Black citizen, Crispus Attucks, who is often referred to as the first martyr of the American Revolution. Of the eight British soldiers involved, six were found not guilty and two were convicted by a jury of manslaughter, not the original charge of murder.

Both John Adams, who became our second president, and his wife Abigail understood the Colonial public would revile Adams for representing the British. In fact, Adams claimed he lost half of his law practice due to his courageous actions. But it was a matter of doing the right thing and establishing that a fair trial was more important than succumbing to a mob mentality.

As Attorney Atticus Finch stood for in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, when he defended poor Black Tom Robinson, justice was more vital to our American democracy than an attorney’s comfort and popularity. When the power of the government comes down on the defenseless, attorneys are often called upon to forego ease and incur the slings and arrows of what might otherwise be governmental power and public opinion run amok. They become the thin, and often disliked, line between tyranny and due process.

I often reflect on what my brother told me was the main reason I should follow his service and enter the legal profession, “You can do more good for more people in law than anything else”. While these lessons of courage, self-sacrifice and altruism may seem unnecessary after so many instances of the harm done by the ravages wrought by the swollen tide of misguided public clamor, our legal profession today may need a reminder. In our current culture of universities, corporations, municipalities and vapid national media bowing to governmental threats and malicious actions, we need our lawyers to once again put duty before fear and courage before capitulation.

In a July 31, 2025 article published by Reuters, the alarm bell has been rung. In their Special Report: How Trump’s crackdown on law firms is undermining legal defenses for the vulnerable, authors Mike Spector, Brad Heath, Kristina Cooke, Joseph Tanfani and David Thomas point to some of America’s most elite law firms as abandoning their core principles under financial pressure from the Trump Administration.

As for me, I do not spend much time assigning blame to those who threaten and coerce. I do not expect altruistic or ethical behavior from them. I do call upon the attorneys to remain true to what lawyers from Adams to today have stood for, an America where when a person has nowhere else to go, an attorney will seek the right regardless of the cost to that attorney or his law firm. Such selfless actions may not be seen as heroic by a public that may generally agree with governmental power being abused against those who are unpopular. Attorneys should not take up legal arms seeking accolades. Their oaths call for them to choose the harder right simply because it is right. Duty often calls for sacrifice and often the old adage, “No good deed goes unpunished”, is the result.

However, if one’s only motivation to eschew the easier wrong is public acceptance, such attorneys might as well resign themselves to lives of comfort and self-contempt. Right for right’s sake in the face of corruption for corruption’s sake is the core principle of America’s legal conscience. The events of our time are once again calling for lawyers to remember why they became lawyers.

Hell Hath No Fury!

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Abigail Adams (1744-1818) was the wife of our second president, John Adams, and the mother of our sixth, John Quincy Adams. She wielded great influence over both but could not secure for women the right to vote. Her effort in the cause of female rights is exemplified by the following excerpt from one of her numerous letters to John while he was deeply involved in the Continental Congress:

“- I long to hear that you have declared an independency [from Great Britain] – and by the way in the new Code of Laws [The Declaration of Independence and new Articles of the Confederation] which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation.” (April 1776) 

A mere 144 years later most American women who were twenty-one years or older got the right to vote when the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. However, in the meantime there was hell to pay for a lot of people who forgot the aphorism, “Hell Hath No Fury Like Women Scorned!” (from a 1697 English play by William Congreve, 1670-1729). Perhaps John Adams and his fellow Founding Fathers, they were all men at the Continental Convention, should have listened. Perhaps they might have saved the United States 144 years of angst and saved themselves many nights on the couch.

It is not as if women, and a lot of men too, were not struggling mightily for many years to give females equality. Such courageous heroines as Dolly Madison (1768-1849), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) were marching lecturing, writing and enduring social, political and even physical danger in the cause of female suffrage. And in my own family my grandmother, who had no right to vote until she was well beyond 21, instilled in my mother, who well remembered when women could not vote, the debt she and other women owed to those pioneers. The best way to repay it was to exercise their dearly bought franchise. My 87-year-old sister Janie was imbued with this burning ardor as is my wife, Peg, who is not 87 but whose dearly departed mother lit that same flame in her.

My sister is a testament to how sacred many women, and many men also, hold the right to vote. Janie has been diagnosed with a slowly progressing but debilitating illness that many would have called uncle to before now. However, I am confident nothing will prevent her from participating in an election that might result in our first female president. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote that I bet included Janie’s. But she and her distaff cohorts now have another chance. I have no doubt my beloved, and committed sister will make it to November 05 and, hopefully well beyond, the medical folks are of the opinion that they have no opinion. “It will be what it will be”, they say.

I think it may turn out that Peg’s mother, my mother and even our grandmothers and great grandmothers, all of whom have gone onto their rewards, may find some way to join Janie and Peg at the polls November 05, 2024, only 248 years after Abigail’s entreaty to John. Of course, many will exercise their rights in support of their contemporary female hopefuls but many women will vote for men on the ticket. And many men will freely vote for the fairer sex but will also support the men on the ballots.

In other words, gender will no longer be, and should never have been, a determining factor in either choosing a candidate or having the right to make such a choice. Congratulations to all of us for no longer basing our vital political selections on sex, no matter what that designation may be. Abigail should be beaming wherever she is.

If Hillary Had Won ….

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We have not, yet, had a First Gentleman. However, Hillary did win the popular vote so we almost had Bill elevated to the role Melania now plays. After seeing how the national media psychoanalyzed Melania’s refusal of Donald’s hand last Monday, my thoughts wondered to how almost President Clinton, Hillary that is, and President Clinton, Bill, would have fared as President and First Gentleman.

I remember a time or two when it was reported that Mrs. and Mr. Clinton might have had a slight difference of opinion over Bill’s behavior. I can see how such difficulties might have occasionally worked their way to light.

Unlike the omniscient media I do not know what goes on inside Melania’s mind nor Bill’s. Perhaps Melania’s public behavior around Donald does not mean anything. And if Bill were First Gentleman he might occasionally engage in displays of public behavior towards Hillary that could be misunderstood as a preference to be somewhere else.

Melania speaks five languages but rarely speaks at all in public. It is unlikely Bill would have been so shy. Bill might have offered to play his saxophone while Hillary conducted interviews with world leaders. I can almost hear his rendition of ♪When The Saints Go Marching In♪ while Hillary explained her positions to Pope Francis.

Melania wears designer gowns to such places as the female section of the Western Wall. Bill might have modeled overhauls when Hillary appeared before the coal miners. I remember when Brother Billy Carter brewed and marketed “Billy Beer”. Maybe First Gentleman Bill could have gone on the “Food Network” with Arkansas recipes for fried squirrel. Melania, of course, does not eat anything.

I am not sure why we have a First Person. We give them no pay and a large house to clean. Of course, such First Ladies as Dolly Madison, Abigail Adams and Eleanor Roosevelt played crucial roles in our country’s history. But whether Melania or the mythical Bill will have such impact is still unwritten.