| No Images? Click here   Do you care what your lawyer believes? What if your lawyer is a Nazi? How many lawyers are Nazis and white supremacists, anyway? Should Nazis even be allowed to practice law? HuffPost's Jessica Schulberg spent the past few weeks asking those questions and writing a story about what she found. We asked her about it.How did this story come about? Whose idea was it?It was Mark Zaid's idea! Mark is a lawyer in DC who handles a lot of interesting national security cases and I've written about some of his past clients. He called me a couple months ago and asked what I was working on. I semi-jokingly told him, "Nazi stuff." He told me he had also been thinking a lot about Nazis — particularly those who also happened to be lawyers. In order to become a lawyer, you have to clear this whole character and fitness process to basically prove that you are moral enough to play this role in the American justice system. Wouldn't being a white supremacist indicate some character flaws, Zaid asked.What did you find that was most surprising?Being a white supremacist isn't usually disqualifying for lawyers. It's hard to make any sweeping statements about state bar organizations because their rules vary by state, they enforce them in seemingly ad hoc ways, and they generally work behind closed doors. I had to go back nearly 20 years to find a case where an aspiring lawyer was denied admission to the bar for being a white supremacist.The legal profession used to ask applicants whether they were involved with the Communist Party, and I get the sense that the embarrassment over that policy has made bar organizations extremely hesitant to do anything that could look like thought policing or an infringement on free speech.What was the hardest part about reporting, writing or editing the story?Deciding where I stand on the issue! I've talked myself in circles while reporting out this story. I'm generally extremely skeptical of entrusting government institutions or private companies to regulate free speech. But I also have a hard time understanding how a person who doesn't believe white people are equal to black people can be entrusted to uphold U.S. laws.This question got even more complicated once I got a hold of police reports detailing really horrific domestic violence allegations against one of the white nationalist lawyers. We've seen a pattern of violence from people with extreme racist views — and, judging by the allegations, it seemed like this person was using his legal background to intimidate his victim and insulate himself from being held accountable.What do you want readers to take away from the piece?Our generation is going to have to confront an increasingly emboldened group of violent racists and I don't think that we, as a society, have a good handle on how to curtail their influence and ability to inflict harm. Whether it's in the legal profession, on Twitter, in universities, or elsewhere, there is always going to be this friction between wanting to silence white supremacists and wanting to protect free speech rights.
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