Counsel for the Dissent

Wherever there is an unpopular cause that most lawyers would not dare touch, Bill Kunstler seems to show up as defense counsel. Kunstler, a Manhattan attorney, is a kind of courtroom paladin who specializes in protecting the right of dissent and even civil disobedience His recent clients include the Black Panthers, Negro Militant Rap Brown Yippie Jerry Rubin, and Roman Catholic draft protesters in Milwaukee and Baltimore. Since Kunstler's role is usually to attack well-entrenched precedent he can be counted on for an original pro vocative argument.

He presented one such argument while defending Rap Brown on charges of in citing last year's riot in Cambridge Md the state has won a change of venue the ground that the trial would create a dangerous situation in Cambridge Kunstler, who believes that Brown can get a fairer trial in Cambridge which has a 35% Negro population,' argued last month that the Sixth Amendment guarantees his client a speedy trial "in the vicinage" of the alleged crime The phrase is nowhere in the amendment But, citing a letter from James Madson Kunstler contended that the framers had meant the amendment to cover this right. The judge has yet to rule on the argument.

Too Scared. William Moses Kunstler 49, was educated at Yale and Columbia Law School. He handled little beyond matrimonial and business cases until he traveled to Mississippi in 1961 In one of his nine books, Deep in My Heart, he relates that the courage of the

Freedom Riders influenced him to dedicate his efforts to promoting racial integration and defending civil rights demonstrators wherever local white attorneys were too scared to take their cases.

As special counsel for Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Kunstler sprang many a demonstrator from Southern jails. Later, he argued the celebrated case that declared de facto school segregation in Washington, B.C., unconstitutional. Though he won on the main point, Kunstler could not get the judge to agree to a more radical proposal. He asked that the court order the Government to force a merger of schools in Washington with those in the white suburbs of Maryland and Virginia.

Kunstler calls himself a "people's lawyer," and in court he plays the part for all it is worth, occasionally risking contempt of court. Defending nine Catholic draft-record burners in Baltimore, Kunstler advised the jury to ignore the judge's charge to them. Protesting the high bail for another Catholic group charged with the same crime in Milwaukee, Kunstler attacked the judge: "I don't think Your Honor will make his career on the bench with heavy bail. It makes the law look ridiculous."

Kunstler's critics say that his briefs can be careless and his arguments farfetched. For example, he was a leading member of the team of lawyers who last summer asked a federal court to prevent Columbia University from disciplining its own campus demonstrators. U.S. District Judge Marvin Frankel described the team's arguments as "at best useless and at worst deeply pernicious nonsense in courts of law."

But Kunstler's admirers, many of them highly respected lawyers, note that what is nonsense today often makes sense tomorrow. "My impression is that the most creative things in the law usually sound unacceptable and unlikely," says Professor Leroy Clark of New York University Law School. "This is the creative side of Kunstler. He comes up with things that make you think."

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