MONOPOLY ROUND-UP: The Democrats’ Corporate Lawyers Get the Humiliation They Deserve.

Lots of monopoly related news, as usual. But I want to start with an important moment in the Democratic Party establishment. Donald Trump got a major corporate law firm, pretty much the shadow Kamala Harris administration in waiting, to bend the knee. At the same time, there were massive outpourings of popular anger towards oligarchs at rallies held by Bernie Sanders, as well as rage from Democratic voters towards their own leaders at town halls. The Democratic Party is in chaos.

Let’s dive in.

For a long time, I’ve discussed a secret center of power in America, what is known as “Big Law,” a network of law firms who serve as a shadow government for the out-of-power party.

Lawyers have always had a special place in America. They must maintain a dual loyalty, serving clients with advice and court representation, but serving the public as officers of the court. There’s a dense ethical code lawyers must maintain. For instance, they can’t help their clients break the law, and they can’t switch sides in a dispute.

In 1931, Robert Jackson, who later served on the Supreme Court, gave a speech to the American Bar Association making that point. “We believe in an independent bar, free not only from government control, but intellectually independent of client control,” he said. “In the client-and-attorney relation the client is not a master, the lawyer is not a mere hired hand. He is an officer of the Court, with a duty of independent judgment in the performance of his professional service and under a duty to serve all sorts and conditions of men.”

But Jackson, along with men he admired such as Louis Brandeis, did not feel that lawyers, especially those in New York working for financial firms, lived up to their billing, instead seeking to twist the law on behalf of the powerful. And the problem is much worse in modern America, dominated as it is by oligarchs. This is especially true in cloistered specialities, like antitrust.

A few years ago, I spoke at the American Bar Association Antitrust Section, and observed the rage the gathered corporate lawyers felt towards anti-monopolists for barging into their club. While I noted at the time the legal elements of the disagreement, there’s a political element as well. These lawyers are the Democratic establishment, the real thinkers and operatives behind the frontmen like Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer and candidates like Kamala Harris and Barack Obama. And it’s been this way for decades, such that it’s systematized. Young ambitious liberals have to get their few years at one of these firms and then they can be considered a real lawyer.

Exit quote: “You can’t understand the Democrats without understanding big law. Paul Weiss is the Dem establishment. Hakeem Jeffries worked there for six years. Schumer’s brother is a partner there, as are two Obama cabinet members. Sotomayor, Kagan, and RBG were all summer associates there.”