Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

Harvard Shouldn’t Punish Harvey Weinstein’s Lawyer

Judging the morality of lawyers by the morality of their clients carries echoes of the McCarthy Era.

March 4, 2019 at 4:00 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

His morals aren’t his lawyer’s.
Photographer: KENA BETANCUR/AFP

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If you’re able to shift your attention for a moment from the drama being played out in Washington, take a moment to worry about the drama being played out in Cambridge, where a professor at Harvard Law School is under fire for choosing to represent an unpopular client.

The professor in question is Ronald Sullivan, an experienced criminal defense lawyer, and the client in question is Harvey Weinstein, which of course means that the fat was in the fire from the first. For signing on to defend one of the most hated men in America, Sullivan (so say a group of Harvard students) should no longer be permitted to serve as a faculty dean of Winthrop House, one of several residence halls for Harvard undergraduates.