Martha W. Barnett of Tallahassee, Fla., became the 124th
president of the American Bar Association at the end of the ABA annual meeting in London
in July. She is the second female president in the history of the legal organization.
(Roberta Cooper Ramo of Albuquerque, N.M. held the post in 1995-96.)
Barnett, 53, is a partner in the law firm, Holland &
Knight, where she specializes in public policy and governmental law, including issues
involving legislative lobbying, state and local taxation, government contracts, ethics and
campaign finance. She is a member of the firm’s Director’s Committee and is past
chair of the Public Law Department.
Barnett is a long-time member of the ABA, and has served in
leadership positions in several of the association’s entities. In 1994, she became
the first woman to chair the ABA’s policy-making House of Delegates, of which she has
been a member since 1984. She has also chaired the Assembly Resolution Committee, the
Board of Governors Finance Committee, the Consortium on Legal Services and the Public, the
Commission on Public Understanding About the Law and the Section of Individual Rights and
Responsibilities. She has served on the Executive Counsel of the Section of Legal
Education and Admissions to the Bar, the Executive Board of the Central and East European
Law Initiative and the Board of Editors of the ABA Journal.
An active member of Florida’s legal communities,
Barnett belongs to The Florida Bar, the Tallahassee Women Lawyers Association and the
Tallahassee Bar Association. She has been president and a board member of the Florida
Lawyers Prepaid Legal Services Corporation. Also in Florida, Barnett was an appointee to
the Governor’s Select Committee on Workforce 2000, the Constitutional Taxation &
Budget Reform Commission and the Florida Commission on Ethics (serving for a time as the
latter group’s chair), and the Constitutional Revision Commission.
Nationally, Barnett held a seat on the Board of Directors of
the American Judicature Society, was a board member of the Lawyer’s Committee for
Civil Rights Under Law and former secretary-treasurer and board member of the National
Institute for Dispute Resolution. She belongs to the American Law Institute and is a life
fellow of the American Bar Foundation. She participated in the United Nations Fourth World
Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.
Barnett has been the recipient of many awards for her service
to the legal profession, including the 1996 Arabella Babb Mansfield Award from the
National Association of Women Lawyers and the 1996 Hillary Clinton Glass Cutter Award. The
National Law Journal named her to its 1998 list of "The 50 Most Influential Women
Lawyers in America."
Barnett received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Newcomb
College, Tulane University of Louisiana in 1969, and her juris doctor degree from the
University of Florida in 1973. She is a member of Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Delta Phi, and was
an editor of the University of Florida Law Review. She is a trustee of the
University of Florida College of Law and is a member of its Law Center Advisory Council.
The University of Florida named her Alumna of Distinction in 1997, and Newcomb College
selected her Outstanding Alumna for 1999.
In March, Barnett talked about her goals for her term as ABA
president with Richard A. Soden of Boston, chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Bar
Activities and Services and a past president of the Boston Bar Association. They met in
Boston, where Barnett addressed the bar’s Volunteer Lawyers Project Annual Reception.
Soden: You have been very specific and direct about
seeking the input of other women leaders and I know that you are planning a women’s
leadership program at Harvard University. It’s a clear piece of your agenda. How do
you propose to make your focus on women in leadership work with being a leader for all the
bar?
Barnett: I think there has been a happy coincidence that
really made me start thinking about this. I’ve always thought about women’s
issues. I’ve always thought about inclusion issues, whether it was racial, or gender
or anything else. Those are the things that are very important to me. It’s one of the
things that helped me to stay motivated and involved in the bar--working on issues like
that.
But in (this) year 2000, when I will be president of the
American Bar Association, for the first time ever, there will be a woman president of the
International Bar Association; the head of the Law Society in England and Wales will be a
woman for the first time; and the head of the Canadian bar will be a woman. Many state bar
presidents are women. Many of the incoming chairs of ABA sections are women. In Florida
alone you have Evett Simmons, who heads the National Bar Association; Edith Osmond, who
heads The Florida Bar, the second woman to do that; and you have me, as I head up the
American bar. So you’ve got three major bar associations with women in just one state
and I don’t think that’s unusual.
I’ve been thinking for a long time about the obligations
that come with success and power as women have achieved, particularly women lawyers. I
think women have achieved in a lot of professional areas, but I know most about lawyers.
My idea is to bring together women leaders, lawyers who are leaders, and talk about,
celebrate, maybe for a minute or two, the success. But really talk about the
responsibilities and obligations that come from success for setting the agenda for the
future. Perhaps for change, using power for constructive social and institutional change.
Acknowledging, you know, some people are very afraid even--I think women particularly--of
admitting they have power. How to use that (power) and the obligation we have as the
generation that was the beneficiary of a lot of pioneers to help set the agenda for the
next generation and to talk about how we can use our positions for constructive change.
I know it still bothers people a little bit that in a time when
they all worry about isolating people because of gender or race or other issues to have a
group of women come together. That makes some people uncomfortable. So what, you know,
good. It’s really not motivated by a desire to be separate and apart, but a desire to
talk about the common experiences we have had and maybe, perhaps, the collective collegial
impact that we have on the future--not just on women, but on society because in the law, I
think women will predominate or certainly very quickly be 50 percent of bar. So
that’s part of the motivation. I’m very proud to be a woman and I’m also
very mindful that many of the opportunities I’ve had were because of people who went
before me. I feel an obligation to do the same for the people who will come behind me.
Soden: You’ve talked about your initiative with
respect to the future of the legal profession—"Seize the Future." And, as I
get it, one, it’s sort of the business of the law: technology, MDP, and the like. And
in the second half, we talk about our core value. I know that you have asked Charlie
Robinson (of Clearwater, Fla.), a past chair of the ABA Section of Law Practice
Management, to be a point person in that area. Charlie’s presentation at the (March
2000) Bar Leadership Institute was really quite unsettling. Do you think we are trying to
redefine our core values because, if we try to hang on to what we believe we were about,
we’re going to lose the march? Do you think that those core values are going to turn
out to be different than what we have seen in the past; that we are going to redefine them
and not just confirm them?
Barnett: I think that what we need to look at redefining
is the structure of how we practice law, how we deliver legal services. MDP is a component
of that, pro se is a component of that. There are all kinds of models for how, in a
technological age, we are going to deliver services that we probably don’t even know
about. My sense is that we’ve been reactionary to that as a profession and that a
service that we can provide our members is to be proactive and to look to the future and
to look at technology and look at commerce, look at the marketplace so that lawyers can
continue to deliver legal services. although maybe in a different structure.
In terms of the core values, maybe it’s important
to have those validated and to go out and talk to lawyers and even talk to the public
about whether those values that those of us in some leadership roles view as core values
are important. I think that there is something very useful that would come from validating
the continuing vitality of those core values. In the Seize the Future initiative, we are
thinking about public hearings to do just that; to hear from consumers, to hear from
lawyers on that subject.
What’s in the balance here is certainly economics, and the
increase in competitive pressures on the profession, but I have said a couple of times,
ultimately, I’m not very worried about lawyers competing in the marketplace. We are
smart people, we’ve been doing it a long time and our services are valuable and
unique. It’s just the structure we have to accommodate.
I am very worried that in this process and in this competitive
technological environment, consumers and lawyers will lose sight of the other obligations
that come with being a lawyer; the responsibilities we have, not only to the client, but
to the administration of justice, to the justice system, to insuring the rule of law, to,
in my own judgment, an independent judiciary, including an independent legal profession.
(That is) why our experiment with democracy worked in this country and it’s why we
are the envy of the free world. And it’s why emerging democracies are asking for help
from organized bar associations in putting together an independent judiciary and lawyers
are a key component of that. That’s the piece that I think we need to reaffirm and
make sure that as we move into whatever new structure it’s going to be, that those
core values--which are essential to a democracy, not essential to the success of a
profession--are maintained and are available.
Soden: You are planning to have a Day of Dialogue on the
death penalty issue. I know the ABA has taken the position that it has no view on the
death penalty itself as a punishment, but that we do have a view on due process and on
fairness. Do you think that the ABA will be moving from that or would it still be playing
in the confines of that view.
Barnett: There is a lot happening right now that relates
directly and indirectly to the imposition of the death penalty. I think the time is right
for the lawyers of America to talk, not about the death penalty itself, but to talk about
things that are of concern to lawyers. And that is whether the death-charged defendant had
adequate counsel and adequate representation; whether there are racial issues involved;
and who gets the death sentence, both in terms of the victim or the accused. (There are)a
whole series of procedural due process and fairness issues that recent events have called
into question.
The ABA in 1997 adopted a moratorium. Overwhelmingly,
the House of Delegates voted to adopt a moratorium on the imposition of the death penalty
until some of these basic questions about fairness, due process, access to the courts, to
adequate counsel could be answered. There is increasing evidence that we are executing
innocent people. There is increasing evidence that depending on the geography, or who you
kill or how it occurs, you know that there is no equity in who gets the death penalty.
It’s often the luck of the state or the day or the incident. So for the ultimate
penalty to continue to have credibility with the public, they have to perceive that
it’s imposed with fairness and without discrimination and with some uniformity of
standards. I think that there is great concern right now that none of that exists. So
it’s not to revisit the death penalty itself, but to, as lawyers, look at the
processes and procedures.
The governor of Illinois took a courageous step in
imposing a moratorium. He did it--even though he is a death penalty supporter--because in
the cases of 13 people, their death penalties have been overturned. In Florida, I think
this is the statistic, 78 percent of the cases where the death sentence has been imposed,
on appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, have been overturned. That is to me, 20-something
years after we have reinstituted the death penalty, a startling statistic.
Soden: Some would argue, of course, that that’s why
it works, because we have the procedural process to undo the mistakes before we execute
people.
Barnett: There is a book coming out by Barry Schek that
is called "Actual Innocence," and it’s a study of 11 cases where the people
were innocent. Many times the death sentence is overturned, but the people stay in jail.
It just wasn’t an appropriate death case. But these are actual innocent defendants.
While I think the American people are about 50/50 in support of the death penalty, very
few of them support it to the extent that they want innocent people to be executed.
That’s just a step that I’m not sure the American people are really ready for.
I think it’s time for lawyers and people who may not be
lawyers but who are related to the justice system to participate in the debate, in the
dialogue. You know I think it’s just time to talk about these issues.
Soden: Let’s talk about diversity. You have
mentioned that you were going to ask Bill Paul to serve as chairman of a committee
that’s going to survive his presidency and continue to work on the diversity issues.
Are there any things in particular that charge you on this, that make you go on this? I
spent some time last night finishing up the book, Rosewood: Like Judgment Day,*
and much of what it told me was (about) where you grew up and the society from which you
came. It’s a very compelling story, and it says, among other things, what a group of
committed lawyers can do to mitigate the injustices in our society. Where does that take
you? You grew up in a substantially separate society. You grew up in Jim Crow, but I
don’t feel any of that (is part of you).
Barnett: This is a long answer because it’s two or
three questions. I am firmly committed to the diversity initiative that Bill Paul started.
I’m proud of him. It took a president of the ABA, it might have taken a president who
was a white male, older, to do what he did and call the attention of the bar and the
public to the issue. He’s got something in motion (and) I believe it is incumbent
upon me and the people to follow me to keep that momentum going because things are
happening for the first time in a long time. The scholarships are important, but
that’s just a little piece. It’s the enthusiasm that is there and the sense of
timing and the rightness to do it that I want to capitalize on and take to another level
if I possibly can. It will be a presidential priority for me.
I am going to convene a committee primarily of some of
the great people Bill Paul was able to draw together. I am asking him to chair that group.
We’re going to have this housed out of the office of the president, in my office, and
I’m going to call together in May (2000) a lot of those people. You will be getting
your invitation in the mail to sit down with me and talk about what the agenda ought to
be. I have things that I might want to do, but I think that would be somewhat arrogant of
me or presumptuous for me to tell people here’s what I think you ought to do. I want
to hear from people who have come up with some wonderful plans about how do we now do
this. We’ll rack it up another level or two. So, hopefully in May we will come out
with an agenda that not only will be my year, but I know that Bob Hirshon (ABA
president-elect) is committed to it as well.
I did grow up in a racially segregated society. I grew up
somewhat privileged for the rural part of the south that I grew up in. There were a lot of
people who wouldn’t think that I was very privileged, but in my little world, I had a
privileged life. And my father was my hero. I used to go with my dad on house calls. He
was one of the doctors who made house calls, who did up until a month or two before he
died. And many, many of his patients were black and poor, it was a poor area of the state.
And I remember, I know and still remember, all of these people, many of whom I came across
again in the Rosewood case. I remember being in their homes while my dad would be with
them and even as a little kid being struck by how different their life was than mine. I
wondered why they had so little and I had so much. I don’t know if that had an impact
on me all of my life.
We lived in a town of 500; you knew everybody and we played
together and (there) were people like Arnett Doctor, a key player in the Rosewood case. To
this day, I’m as close to him as anybody can be, and I was then. I knew there was a
difference and I thought it was so unfair then and it has carried over. The thoughts I had
then have affected me all of my life in terms of my approach to civil rights and equality.
It had a big impact on me.
*Editor’s note: The 1996 book, by author, Michael
D’Orso, recounts the events in the mostly black town of Rosewood, Fla., when on Jan.
1, 1923, a white mob lynched black men and shot black women, and burned their houses. In
1994, the Florida Legislature passed a measure that provided $2.1 million in compensation
to the nine survivors of the massacre. Holland & Knight, Barnett’s law firm,
represented the Rosewood survivors. John Singleton produced and directed the film version
of the story.
