Kenneth Starr, Dean of Law at Pepperdine University opposes

Branding their thumbs was not for the purpose of punishment, it was to insure that they couldn't claim "benefit of clergy" in the future. You could invoke it just once. By the time of the revolution, even illiterates were permitted to invoke it.

And that again is a big IF, you would know that there is absolutely nothing in common between the two cases.

Just one very simple difference is that the British were UNIFORMED.

The point is legal representation and whether the person defending hated defendants is fit or unfit to hold public trust. What those defendants wore is an issue for fashion consultants. Personally I thought those snappy red-coats with all the buttons on the sleeves to prevent the soldiers from wiping their noses on the sleeves. Were rather eye-catching. Indeed, there is an argument to be made, but not by me, not here, that the British wore uniforms and moved in accordance with what they understood as the international rules of war then more or less followed in Europe, while the Americans, at least initially, dressed in their regular clothes indistinguishable from the general population and often fired from cover. You can read it in the books should you wish to.

Why am I having deja vu headaches? You're not related to anyone who posted as Kidpeat are you?

I am curious as to why you say IF you knew your American History when I was born in Maryland, did primary secondary and Unversity and Post Graduate studies in American History there. Is it that you don't know, or is it that American History is to you all a Point of View, and you think there is no common understanding of most issues?

My preferred source on most of these questions is the US Army's Military History of the United States, which is available on line. For incidents that occurred before the constitution of the US Army, you'll have to go to a book. David McCullough has written a good accessible history which is well researched and with which I generally agree.

Rob

And you can't tell the difference between a soldier and a terrorist.
The two situations are nothing alike no matter how you spin it.

Your Point of View is set in granite, and I won't argue with a closed mind.

The Boston Massacre was in 1770. The Continental Army didn't form until 1775. In 1770, what would you expect the colonists to wear in the way of a "uniform"?
In your studies of American history, did you notice how Adams packed the jury with British sympathizers in that trial?

Selection to favour a verdict is something which still goes on.

As I noted in my post, in the early Revolutionary War, which began at Lexington and Concord in April? of 1775, the Americans did not wear uniforms because the Continental Army had not been constituted, thank you for missing that. It took rather a long time for uniforms to become available and commonly used. Why these clearly understood issues in the academic community are so foreign to the American people baffles me. Much of it I learned in High School.

Arguing that I said something I didn't say is a waste of your time and mine. I will argue history with anyone in a neutral forum. This isn't it. Your views and attitudes and perhaps even your personal animus are set in granite.

What you seem to have missed is the Point. The Point, JV, is Liz Cheney, a law graduate, arguing that lawyers are somehow contaminated by their clients, by having simply done their jobs or what they were asked to do, to defend unpopular defendants.

Adams' son John Quincy Adams did the same thing late in his life, representing the rebellious black slave "cargo" of a Spanish ship before the Supreme Court. The Right to Due Process and Legal Counsel is a right arising out of English Common Law via Habeas Corpus, though it was only codified there in 1836, but that absence of codification is common in English Common Law, a system of law built on precedent, not on a written set of principles . In the US it was codified by the Sixth Amendment but that right wasn't finally nailed down for state courts in the US until 1963 so we as Americans shouldn't feel too superior.

Rob

Selection to favor a verdict may still go on, but I think some of the selection in that trial would raise some eyebrows today. Examples: One had said before the trial that Preston (one of the officers) was "as innocent as the Child unborn". Another had previously helped Preston with his defense by lining up witnesses willing to support Preston's version of the events.

long as the judicial process, and has actually improved over the years. I don't think that any of us would argue that Adams himself was rabidly pro-British at the time. Additionally, having seen reconstructions on an Historical program on just this subject, the crowd was larger than the contingent of soldiers, were chucking rubbish at them, and the British Officer denies giving the order to fire. Nobody knows who shouted "Fire" but there is at least reasonable doubt that it was the soldiers who shouted it, hence the verdict. All but one of those killed was quite close to the British. I think they should have fired in the air over the heads of the crowd, but I wasn't there, or frightened by the thought of perhaps being beaten to death. Boston was the seat of rebellious agitation, just as New York was strongly pro-British.

Perhaps the verdict is a symbol of shared British and American belief in the justice system (as contrasted, for example, with the French system requiring one to prove one's innocence even today). Perhaps the attitude of my old History teacher in High School, that this was an instance of pre-Revolution Americans "doing the right thing, no matter the passions surrounding the issue" and being a tribute to American justice is a good way to take this.

Certainly, despite his legal maneuvering, Adams was acting responsibly for his clients and within the conventions of the courts at that time. We can be grateful for the gift of principles from English Common Law without feeling we are denigrating or demeaning the American broadening and deepening of those principles. From 1789 on America led the world as a beacon for the rule of law; imperfect and occasionally flickering though that beacon may have been. (I quite like that example, pity there's no way to get my dissertation completed and accepted after this long a break. I write better now than I did back in 1974.)

Rob

I unfortunately made my post in haste and did not have time to elaborate.
In regards to being ?uniformed?, it was meat that they were a standing, recognized military.
There is absolutely no way anyone can make any kind of comparison between the two cases.
I for one am extremely disgusted that anyone would denigrate the character and lifetime accomplishments of Addams in trying to equate his extremely brave service defending the British soldiers and what the current crop of terrorist sympathizers in the DOJ did.

because the ad in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYgV6-CWsp0
did NOT suggest these prisoners didn't deserve to be defended., That is not the subject of the ad at all. It's been misrepresented (WHY, I wonder).

What the ad says is that Atty Gen Holder should disclose to the American people who he has hired, especially when they are people who will be affecting policy on terrorism.

These employees are our employees, and we DO have a right to know who they are and what their background is.

Now, whether these prisoners deserve representation or not is another issue that should also be discussed.

were held prisoner in camps in the US. As far as I know none of them were given "rights" or had trials or legal representation. No one complained about that . How come?

In view of the fact that theses Gitmo prisoners were captured overseas in combat situations, I don't see why they should be treated any differently.

I would suggest that those who say they should be, and that includes the Attorney General, are following a political agenda.

Because War was "Declared"?

"buzz words", "buzz ideas", that go around some leftwing sites that other people pick up on and promote as an original idea.
With the failing of "transperency" of the current Presidential administrartion and his DOJ, the idea of equating what Adams did was the "group buzz thought" du jour to deflect attention.

deflecting attention is what they do best.

The whole issue is miscast. They are throwing fits because the lawyers are being criticized. Didn't they criticize (and even prosecute) lawyers who worked in the Bush Administration? Why is it an outrage to criticize what THEY do but not when THEY criticize what their opponents do?

WHY must they obscure and hide everything they do?

Are they/we better at it than the other guys/you?

outrage?

the video clip, who exactly is misrepresenting it?

a good read on the subject can be found here However, it is entirely inappropriate to suggest that these lawyers share the values of terrorists or to dub the seven DOJ lawyers "The al Qaeda Seven." Unfortunately, this is what a video released by the organization Keep America Safe does

and of course, the video he mentions is the same as yours

,.

Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's attack ad against Eric Holder and the Justice Department for hiring lawyers who defended Al Qaeda defendants. His thesis is that it is inherent in the American (and British and Canadian) system of justice that everybody is entitled to a defense,

They didn't say otherwise. No link of course. Wonder why. Perhaps because that would have exposed the lie.

Others across the internet on lefty blogs, etc. are making the same bogus claim and calling Cheney's ad "McCarthyism" (and calling her other, less printable things in the usual "liberal" fashion.) Disgusting crap as usual from those sources.

I don't know why you read them.

I guess we're gluttons for punishment.

If it was in the newspaper and you were a customer, you could buy it and burn it.