Oregon State Bar Bulletin — JANUARY 2008
Letters

Reflecting on Legal Heritage Column
The Oregon Constitution effective in 1859 provides in Article II, Section 6: "No negroe, chinaman or mulatto shall have the right of suffrage."

Of course there could have been some national politicking involved in this provision, as Oregon was asking Congress to be admitted as a new state of the Union using this constitution, and the southern states appeared to be blocking admissions of proposed states, like Kansas, that opposed continued slavery.

Judge Deady "authored" some Oregon law books, and I copied from an 1864 edition, confirming it with Carey’s History of the Oregon Constitution, where Negroe, Chinaman and Mulatto are capitalized.

Mr. Nove’s article reports on a massacre during the time period where this invidious provision was still in the state constitution.

Edward Fadeley,
Creswell


Super Lawyers: A Response
In the December 2007 Bulletin, William C. White, publisher of Super Lawyers magazine writes in response to my "Parting Thoughts" in the October 2007 Bulletin. The premise of my column was that legal authority exists that would impose a higher standard of care on attorneys who allow themselves to be marketed as having skills that are superior to the other lawyers in the community. It was my position that the representations contained in the Super Lawyers website constitute such advertising. Mr. White either misunderstood or chose to ignore this premise and stated that I believed a higher standard would be imposed on Super Lawyers because he or she stated that they had been selected. It is the claims of superior skills contained in the website that would be the basis for the higher standard.

I applaud Mr. White’s vigor in attempting to assure his Super Lawyers that despite his website and magazine actively and aggressively promoting them to consumers of legal services as having superior qualities compared to other lawyers in the state, the Super Lawyers have no higher standard care to their clients. Mr. White appears to have based this conclusion on his belief that other organizations do the same thing and, therefore, it must be okay. It has yet to be determined what weight, if any, courts will give to that argument, and Mr. White provided no legal authority for it.

I was surprised that Mr. White’s response did not tout the superior qualities of his Super Lawyers but rather was devoted entirely to explaining why Super Lawyers would not have a higher standard of care. If Super Lawyers are superior, the point I was making would be moot with respect to them, since they would always meet the higher standard. Perhaps Mr. White is acknowledging that Super Lawyers are really not superior after all and that the Super Lawyers marketing concept is nothing more or less than unabashed hucksterism.

Daniel C. Re,
Bend

— return to top
— return to Table of Contents