New York may not regulate Giuliani (or other lawyers) because its legislature has never clearly determined what it is that it is regulating when it is regulating “the practice of law”

 

New York may not regulate Giuliani (or other lawyers) because its legislature has never clearly determined what it is that it is regulating when it is regulating “the practice of law”

 

 

Tatiana Neroni, J.D.

September 24, 2021

 

 

The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that for any law to be constitutional, it has to be done by the legislature, and the legislature must clearly define in that law – so that an ordinary person of average education and intelligence understands it - what the law allows and what it prohibits, and the law must give a clear guidance to the executive branch (police and prosecutors) and to judges how to apply it[1].  

When New York regulates “admission to the bar”[2], it regulates not the same admission to the bar which requires a human body with a heartbeat, over 21 years of age and with some dollars in his or her pocket, but what it mysteriously calls “the practice of law”.

Yet, New York’s legislature so far did not come around yet to clearly define what “the practice of law” means.

Thus, New York may not, until it does so define, regulate any lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, and any New York’s decisions admitting or expelling lawyers from “the practice of law” are null and void.

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[1] Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104 (1972).

[2] New York State Judiciary Law § 90.