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12/4/36
SPONSOR DEFENDS "GOOD WILL COURT" IN BRIEF
The side of the Good-Will Court radio program in the case of legal ethics, filed recently in the Appellate Division for an opinion governing the aopearances of judges as legal advisers on such commercial broadcasts, was disclosed in New York this week in a brief oreoared by Charles H. Tuttle, former United States Attorney, renresenting the program's sponsor and advertising agency, and Louis Nizer, attorney for A. L. Alexander, who conducts the broadcasts.
The brief was filed also with the New York County Lawyers' Association. The soonsor of the broadcast over nation¬ wide radio facilities on Sunday nights, is Standard Brands, a food concern. J. Walter Thompson Company, of New York, is the agency handling the program. The American Bar and other legal associations have criticized the conduct of lawyers, judges and ex-judges who participate in such commercial broadcasts.
The brief-memorandum contends that as a broadcast the court "is distinctly educational in its content and in the manner in which the content is presented", and that it "serves to accomplish effectively and on an imcomparsble scale one of the objects which bar associations have recently been urging to wit: the popularizing of the law."
In a letter sent August 11 by Governor Lehman to Mr. Alexander, which was contained in the brief, it was pointed out that Mr. Lehman had declared the Good-Will Court broadcasts "serve a very real purpose in bringing to people a better under¬ standing of the scope and purpose of our courts and of our laws. "
Attorney General John J. Bennett, Jr. in July, in a letter to Mr. Alexander, declared:
"The practice of having members of the local judiciary answer and advise is to be commended. * * * The idea of the broadcast is a most humane one, since here is provided a great system of public education."
Other such letters of commendation were received from Attorney General Wilentz of New Jersey, Governor Hoffman and various legislators and city officials.
The brief expressed the opinion that many of the socalled "cases" heard during the broadcasts "illustrate and emphasize the inadequacies of existing laws and sometimes their downright injustice.
"To shut off tnis method of speech", the memorandum continued, "this medium of education and this incitement to public thinking would be a gross interference with the freedom of speech and of thought. To do so on purely technical and legalistic grounds and for the fancied benefit of some particu
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