By Ezra Wohlgelernter
As Yogi Berra famously quipped, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”
The baseball legend surely never imagined his colorful redundancy would one day capture the professional obligations of lawyers in moments of national crisis. Yet history has a way of repeating itself. In today’s deeply fractured political climate, the pressure placed upon lawyers who represent unpopular clients or causes has become déjà vu all over again – and the Philadelphia bar has seen this moment before.
At a time when the rule of law and judicial independence face mounting hostility, when lawyers and law firms are attacked for the clients they represent, and when advocacy itself can carry personal and professional consequences, our Philadelphia legal community would do well to remember one of the proudest chapters in its history.
That chapter began in 1953, at the height of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade.
That year, nine members of the Communist Party in Philadelphia were arrested and charged under the Smith Act, a federal statute that criminalized advocating the overthrow of the government by force or violence. Importantly, none of the defendants were accused of committing violent acts. Their alleged offense was ideological.
One of those defendants, Sherman Labovitz, was a World War II veteran, husband, father, and struggling furniture salesman. As an organizer for the Communist Party of Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware, Labovitz later wrote in his memoir, Being Red in Philadelphia, that his political commitments arose not from disloyalty to the country, but from opposition to fascism, racism, and economic injustice.
But in the climate of McCarthyism, legal representation itself became controversial. Lawyers who defended accused communists risked public condemnation, professional retaliation, and damage to their reputations. As fear spread, the nine defendants struggled to find counsel willing to represent them.
Then Bernard G. Segal, Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, took a principled stand. Segal understood that constitutional rights mean little if they exist only for the popular, the powerful, or the politically favored. He insisted that even the most reviled defendants were entitled to vigorous legal representation and a fair trial.
Segal assembled an extraordinary team of Philadelphia lawyers to undertake the defense. Thomas D. McBride led the effort; he would later become Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, Pennsylvania Attorney General, and a justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The team also included Joseph S. Lord III, later a federal judge on the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and Edmund B. Spaeth Jr., later a judge of the Pennsylvania Superior Court.
Despite the formidable defense, all nine defendants were convicted after a 71-day trial.
While the case was on appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified that mere membership in the Communist Party, absent advocacy of imminent violent action, did not violate the Smith Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit subsequently reversed the convictions, and the defendants ultimately walked free.
Labovitz went on to become the first professor emeritus at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, where he helped establish the school’s undergraduate social work program.
Today, fear, ideology, and political division once again threaten to erode fundamental legal principles. Lawyers and law firms increasingly face criticism and pressure based not on their conduct, but on the clients and causes they represent. The independence of the legal profession is being tested, and the Philadelphia bar must decide how it will respond.
The lesson of the McCarthy era is not that every client was right or every cause just. It is that constitutional rights have meaning only when they are extended to those who are unpopular, controversial, or widely condemned. The rule of law survives only when lawyers are willing to defend it under precisely those circumstances.
History ultimately rejected McCarthyism. The Senate censured Joseph McCarthy, the fever of political persecution subsided, and the convictions of the Philadelphia defendants were overturned. What endured was the principle that Bernard Segal and his colleagues understood so well: The legal profession’s highest duty is not to public opinion, but to the Constitution and the administration of justice.
That duty belongs to us now. The question is whether we will meet it with the same courage, independence, and commitment to principle that defined the Philadelphia lawyers who came before us.
We can. And we will.
Ezra Wohlgelernter is 2026 Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association. You can email him at chancellor@philabar.org.
