The Delaware State Bar Association

President's Corner

by Patricia C. Hannigan, Esquire

Now in the sunset days of my tenure as President of the Delaware State Bar Association (violins, please), I take the opportunity to review the activities of the Association over the last year. On one hand, it’s hard to believe the year is almost over, it seems to have evaporated. On the other hand, the mountains of correspondence, notes, email, etc. alerting me to all the multitudinous activities of members of the Bar, makes it seem impossible that all this could have been done in only one year, it must have been much longer.

I must start my review at the end, by acknowledging what a wonderful gift we at the Delaware Bar received last month, when Mr. Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief and his wife and five-year-old daughter came to visit, along with their host family and their five-year-old daughter. You probably know the story, everyone does by now: Mr. Al-Rehaief is the Iraqi lawyer who risked his life and those of his family members to lead American soldiers to rescue Pvt. Jessica Lynch in Iraq after her capture by loyalists to Saddam Hussein. The Executive Committee of the Delaware State Bar Association, immediately upon hearing of the selfless bravery of a member of a sister Bar, decided to invite him to become an honorary member of our Bar.

We invited him to join us for our Law Day celebration on May 8, never really dreaming he would be able to do so. Through the very diligent efforts of Senator Joe Biden – a 36-year member of our Bar – and his staff, especially Claire DeMatteis – herself a member of our Bar and of the DSBA Executive Committee — the invitation was communicated to Mr. Al-Rehaief, he accepted, and we found ourselves hosting the two families as our honored guests in Wilmington.

At the Law Day luncheon, we presented Mr. Al-Rehaief a plaque and an honorarium of one thousand dollars. We also gave him an engraved Special Resolution of the Bar Association, reading in part: ”Whereas, by coming to the aid of a defenseless person, he showed unparalleled decency and dignity and became a model for all lawyers; and Whereas he acted in the best tradition of members of the Bar everywhere who routinely take on unpopular causes; and Whereas, we, the members of the Delaware State Bar Association, desire to record our very great respect and admiration for him, and to further express our pride in him as a member of our profession; Therefore Be It Resolved that we hereby make him a lifetime Honorary Member of the Delaware State Bar Association.”

I had the great pleasure of meeting Mr. Al-Rehaief, his American host, who is an attorney with the federal government, and both their families. My husband and I joined them for dinner the night before the Law Day celebration with our six-year-old daughter. The three girls were a study in Americanism: a newly arrived immigrant, mimicking the sounds of completely new English words, and soaking everything up like a sponge; a red-headed Iraqi-American born in this country, and my Vietnamese-born version of the All American Girl. It was wonderful to watch them; they all took obvious delight in each other, never mind any language or cultural barrier. As my mother would have said: “Only in America!”

Luckily, most of us will never be called upon to display the kind of heroism shown by Mr. Al-Rehaief. However, the contributions, day after day, of members of our Bar are really remarkable. To return to my review of the last year, there really is not enough room even to mention all of them. Some are obvious, and specifically related to the legal profession. For example: working closely with members of the General Assembly on proposed legislation; developing ways to resolve disputes without litigation; CLE seminars to ensure the best possible representation for every client; improving access to the justice system for low income people and trying to find alternative sources of funding for such efforts, etc. That’s a lot!

But in addition, members of our Bar are actively involved in the community, not only by serving on countless non-profit boards, etc., but also specifically as representatives of the Bar. Consider, for example, the efforts of the Criminal Law Section, revived recently under the leadership of Chair Bernard Pepukayi, which sent two-person teams to several classes at Howard High School and Dover High School last month. Each team was composed of one defense attorney and one prosecutor. Their topic: “how to avoid legal trouble/why it is important to avoid legal trouble.” That’s community service! So is the annual trek to schools on Law Day that so many of our members make.

Also very active in terms of community involvement is the Multicultural Judges and Lawyers Section, exploring issues like racial profiling and “jump-out squads” in law enforcement efforts. The Section also sponsors the Supplemental Bar Review Course, to help applicants who may need one final, small boost to make it over the bar of the bar exam.

And consider the extraordinarily active Women and the Law Section. This Section supports (1) the annual Governor’s Award For Excellence in Early Child Care and Education, in recognition of the important role that childcare providers play in allowing Delaware lawyers to pursue their legal careers; (2) the annual Roxana Arsht Fellowship, which makes it possible for new attorneys with heavy student loan debt to work in non-profit (and therefore always low-paying, of course) positions; (3) the Women’s Prison/Child Care Work Release Project, through which a child care facility is under construction at the Women’s Corrections Institution and Women’s Work Release Center, and (4) my personal favorite- the “All-Women’s Build” project with Habitat for Humanity, to construct a home for a low income family entirely by women workers.

These are all very significant contributions to our community by our Bar and we should be proud of them. It has been a great privilege for me, during the last year, to get a bird’s eye view of the enormous array of activities of the members of this Bar.

Return to June 2003 Table of Contents.