Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Spring 2014, Vol. 40, No. 1 | Page 20

by Rick Hubbard, Esq.

Restoring Citizen Representation
in Our Democratic Republic
Congress Is Lagging—Do We Have the Will to Force Change?
American citizens are coming to terms
with the fact that we have effectively lost
most of the representation our political
system in Washington is supposed to provide us. The need for campaign money, the
way it is mostly raised today, and the access, power and influence that go with it,
distort, delay, and influence outcomes of
legislation, policy, and regulation in ways
that corrupt the function of our political
system and increasingly serve the interests of those wealthy contributors, and the
politicians and political parties that receive
them, rather than the interests of the majority of people in America today.
It’s a damning indictment and it goes to
the core of our democracy and representation. After all, our forefathers declared
our independence from Great Britain and
founded our country over this issue.
The question I raise here today is, what
are we, as individuals and as the Vermont
Bar Association, going to do about it? Do
we have the interest, and the will?
Our Responsibilities as Members
of the Legal Profession

Section I, subsections 1 and 6 of the Preamble and Scope of our Vermont Rules of
Professional Conduct provide guidance.
[1] A lawyer, as a member of the legal
profession, is … an officer of the legal
system and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice …
[6] As a public citizen, a lawyer should
seek improvement of the law … As
a member of a learned profession, a
lawyer should cultivate knowledge of
the law beyond its use for clients, employ that knowledge in