"Big People Can Be Wrong"

By Richard Lacayo

Like some 170,000 lawyers before him, Michael T. Rose was admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court bar late last month. Normally such admission is a routine step. In Rose's case, however, it represented release from a four-year "living nightmare" that cost him, he says, "friends, clients and career and I don't know how many sleepless nights." What finally ended Rose's ordeal was the same thing that began it: an unusual opinion by Chief Justice Warren Burger.

Rose was first admitted to the Supreme Court bar in 1982, when he was a Denver attorney. Although a majority of the court approved his application, Burger, joined by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, fired off a widely publicized dissent. As Burger saw it, "Rose's professional conduct does not meet the standards the court should require." The Chief Justice based this view on the findings of a Colorado bar investigation. Though Rose was licensed to practice law in that state in 1981, his first application in 1975 had been rejected. In that initial round, a state bar investigating committee charged that among other things, Rose had misrepresented himself as being licensed to practice in Colorado.

Rose, 38, who now heads a farm relief program in South Carolina, contends that the opposition of his Colorado accusers was politically motivated. A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Rose had created a stir in the early '70s with a law- review article charging the military academies with violating the rights of cadets charged with honor-code transgressions. He discussed his charges on a segment of 60 Minutes and later represented 100 West Point cadets accused of cheating.

Seeking to clear his name after Burger's blast, Rose enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union and a former Associate Attorney General of the U.S., John Shenefield. But in 1985 the Colorado Supreme Court rejected Rose's petition to reopen his case, and earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court refused review. Undaunted, Rose flew to Washington and sought the help of former Solicitor General Erwin Griswold. Meanwhile, time was running out: Burger announced in June that he intended to retire from the court.

On Griswold's advice, Rose resigned from the Supreme Court bar and then immediately reapplied, a move that forced the court to reconsider his qualifications. His new application was supported by a letter from Griswold arguing that procedures by which Rose was initially denied admission to the Colorado bar were "seriously defective." Also attached was an affidavit from former Colorado District Court Judge Roger Cisneros, who had been on the Colorado bar investigating committee. Cisneros suggested that the committee members who voted against Rose did so because of their impression that he was "an activist . . . not the kind of person they wanted."

The plan worked. The court unanimously readmitted Rose. In a brief concurrence, Burger, again joined by O'Connor, said the record now demonstrated that "the applicant is 'of good moral and professional character.' " Burger maintained, however, that his earlier attack on Rose was justified on the basis of the information then in the court's possession. Rose is satisfied that the outcome proves his point. "Big people and big institutions can be wrong," he says. "You've got to allow for that."

With reporting by Anne Constable/Washington and Craig Matsuda/Denver