The chief justice as hired gun.

Like most people who watched his confirmation hearings, I admired John Roberts's knowledge of the law--he seems to have memorized every case ever decided by an American court--and his ability to succinctly summarize judicial opinions. But one answer he gave disturbed me.

Sen. Dick Durbin wanted to find out if there was any client Roberts would not represent. Durbin knew Roberts had represented gay-rights advocates in a suit challenging a state constitutional provision on the ground that it restricted those rights, so Durbin asked if Roberts would have been willing to work for the other side:

"I probably would have," was the answer. He added, in the words of Robin Toner and David Kirkpatrick of The New York Times, that "a lawyer should not sit in judgment of his client."

This is the hired-gun philosophy of the practice of law. The problem is that it leads most lawyers who subscribe to it to take any client who can afford their fee. The unfortunate effect is to make justice more available to the well-heeled, and only to the rest of us if we happen to be killed or maimed in an accident that could prove lucrative for a plaintiff's attorney. What lawyers should be doing is to take only cases that they believe in--at the very least, insisting that their client have a reasonable ground for the claim he is making or the defense he proposes.

A lawyer should refuse to work for corporate villains like the tobacco companies. They can destroy your soul as they lure you into participating in tactics like intimidation and concealment. You become Robert Duvall in "A Civil Action."

The only exception is that you should accept court appointments to represent the indigent so that they will not be deprived of counsel. Otherwise, why should you help the bad guys?