[Doug Cassel is Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School]
Heller’s
reply misses the point of my post,
Suing Chevron in Ecuador: Do the Ends Justify the Means? I did not ask whether Chevron is an “innocent victim.” I asked whether the ends pursued by plaintiffs’ lawyers (environmental remediation) justify their means (making covert payments to the court’s “independent” expert from their “secret account,” writing his report and then lying about it, meeting secretly with the judge in an abandoned warehouse, etc.).
I answered, “No.” Human rights lawyers cannot vindicate rights by trashing the rights to due process and fair trial. Doing so undermines our moral and professional credibility.
I hold that view as a career human rights lawyer, not (in Heller’s
ad hominem) as an “advocate for Chevron.” My post linked to my longer
open letter, which made explicit that I billed Chevron for representing it on an amicus brief, but not for the time entailed in writing the open letter.
Heller’s “
other side of Chevron” consists of a series of erroneous, tendentious or unsupported accusations, based almost entirely on press statements by plaintiffs’ PR operatives. In the order he raises them:
