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tuesday, December 1, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Campus/Area
Law professor maintains his ideals
Scott Caroenter/KANSAN
David Gottlieb, professor of law, teaches a class in criminal law. He also runs a clinic where KU law students take or cases from the state, and federal penitentiaries at Leavenworth.
By MICHAEL MERSCHEL Staff writer
David Gottlieb, professor of law, is still holding true to some of the ideals he had as a student in the 1960s.
"I grew up in an era when public service and government were incredibly looked up to as noble aspirations," he said.
Some of his attitudes have matured, but Gottlieb still is trying to serve the public through his work as a defense attorney, a teacher and sometimes, a political activist.
He has a reputation of being a "bleeding-heart liberal," but that's not entirely accurate, he said. He's also known for backs have been conservative causes.
Gottlieb teaches criminal law and administers a clinic in which law students take on prisoners' cases. Gottlieb to prescribe when he hears an offender from idlephy.
Right now, he is handling an Oklahoma death penalty case that he volunteered to take on because he wanted to learn more about the death penalty.
He received statewide attention for testifying about the death penalty last spring before the Kansas Legislature. He has testified before the Legislature and the Lawrence City Commission on other issues.
He has served as president of the Kansas affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, and he co-founded the class during his sabbatical last year.
His involvement is not confined to law and academia Gottlieb plays violin in the Lawrence Chamber Players and the Lawrence Symphony and guitar in "The Moody Blue-books," a rock and roll band made up of law school professors.
"We play bad rock and roll," he said, "or, I should say, we play good rock and roll badly."
Gottlieb said that he enjoyed being involved in so many projects but that he saw nothing unique about the number of projects he undertook. It's just part of being a law professor, he said, in a voice that betrayed his Chicago unbringing.
"One of the wonderful things about this job is the opportunity it provides many of us to become involved in matters of public concern," he said, "and one of the wonderful things about this faculty is that so many members are involved."
But some of his colleagues say Gottlieb is more than just another involved law professor.
"He comes very close to filling the idealized model I have of a faculty member," said Sid Shapiro, professor of law and Gottlieb's friend.
Shapiro said he admired Gottlieb for doing more than talking about problems at a time when many people are apathetic. He gets involved in causes and is a leader in many of them. Shapiro said.
Gottlieb also does well at a difficult
kind of teaching. Shapiro said.
Gottlieb splits his time between regular classroom teaching in criminal justice and teaching two clinics, in which students handle actual cases from prisoners in the federal and state penitentiaries at Leavenworth.
Gottlieb is starting his ninth year at the clinics. He compared running the clinics to running a small law firm. He handles the budget, assigns cases and sometimes takes over students' cases when they get too complex.
The one-on-one teaching in the clinics can be demanding, he said.
"At KU, people have tended to leave clinical teaching after five years," he said. "I'm the record holder."
Gottlieb's work with prisoners also can be demanding.
He first worked with prisoners as a public defender for the Legal Aid Society in New York. He handled mostly criminal appellate cases at the federal level. He worked there for five years after receiving his law degree from Georgetown University in 1974.
The conditions he saw people awaiting trial endure in New York appalled Gottlieb and drew him into working with prisoners.
Gottlieb said that although some people might recoil from working with convicted criminals, it wasn't difficult for him to defend them.
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"I suppose I have an anti-authoritarian emotional response," he said. "I have a great deal of respect for most of the people I've worked with in corrections, but the fact remains
"It's never been difficult for me to ask or demand that we treat those we imprison according to the law and with a minimum of decency."
that prison represents governmental power at its most extreme and most unaccountable.
Defending prisoner's rights is important. he said.
"I suppose I see myself as the civil liberties lawyer with the really tough cases," he said. "I don't think it's very tough to represent a librarian who's challenging a schoolboard's having banned 'Cats' Cradle." That's just not that hard to do. Defending the civil liberties of my clients is hard."
But he added. "If their legal rights are respected, we are truly all safe from government."
One of Gottlieb's current clients is an inmate on death row in Oklahoma. Gottlieb volunteered to take the case when it appeared inevitable that Kansas would adopt the death penalty.
One reason Kansas has no death penalty of its own is that Gottlieb gave convincing testimony last spring before the Legislature.
At the start of his involvement in the death penalty debate, Gottlieb said, he has not planned on being so involved and just wanted to learn about the issues.
"There's no question that I started with a predisposed attitude against the death penalty," he said. "But most of the time, when I investigate issues in detail, I find that the issues are more complex and more ambiguous and the answers are more
difficult did I would have imagined,
"That didn't happen with the death
penalty. The more I studied it, the
worse it appeared to be."
difficult than I would have imagined.
He was then asked by people who opposed the death penalty to do an estimate of how much it would cost them if it were testified about in front of the Legislature.
Emil Tonkovik, professor of law, also testified in front of the Legislature about the cost of the death penalty, his estimate was lower than Gottlieb's.
That was not the only time the two men have been on opposite sides of an issue, but Tonkovich said he respected Gottlieb for looking at issues rationally instead of emotionally.
"He looks at things based on the law and not just on ideological position." he said.
Tonkovik said many people had opposed the death penalty for political reasons without examining the issues as thoroughly as Gottlieb had.
Studying sentencing was the official reason Gottlieb took his sabbatical last year, but he said he took the year off because he was burning out on his work.
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Music was one method for getting away from his work. His rock band meets infrequently, but he often plays violin with his wife, who has toured nationwide giving piano recitals under her maiden name, Rita Sloan.
Gottlieb said that the sabbatical took care of his feelings of burnout and that he enjoyed his job too much to think about leaving any time soon.
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