The American Bar Association has provided little inspirational leadership for the nation's lawyers to fight for the rights of the individual. That is nothing new. Fifteen years earlier, Chief Justice Earl Warren severely criticized the ABA for its failure to perform acts that are either an official duty or a legal requirement in the area of human rights: "in all candor, I cannot say that in my view the organized bar of the nation has, on the whole, discharged that obligation in praiseworthy fashion. Throughout the McCarthy era, and for years following that shameful period, while the federal courts were struggling to make the Bill of Rights and the Civil War Amendments meaningful in our society, the organized bar of the nation did precious little to assist. On the contrary, it occupied itself with trying to establish to the world that the Supreme Court of the United States was the handmaiden of Communism and the greatest friend the Soviets had in America."

Nearly from its inception, the American Bar Association has held affectionately to its pallid bosom its favorite child, the wealthy white male Protestant from selected parentage. Blacks were not admitted to the organization until 1953. The ABA's standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which passes judgment on all nominees to the federal bench, was, from its birth in 1946, restricted in membership, cloaked in class bias, and composed of lawyers from the "fast track" -- the said "best and brightest" of the Anglo-Saxon elitist bar. More than half its membership came from the very corporate law firms that have perennially held the reins of the bar. None of the committee members in these crucial years specialized in criminal law or family law

Gerry Spence, "WITH JUSTICE FOR NONE", Penguin Books

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