 Hi, I'm Mary Ann Sasaki, and you're watching Life in the Law, Wednesdays Think Tech Hawaii, from one to one-thirty. I am honored and delighted today to have a guest who—I'm humbled by his work. So I hope—I think you all may be as well. His name is Eric A. Seitz, and he's a civil rights attorney right here in Honolulu. Welcome to the show, Eric. Thank you. My pleasure. Where should we start? We started at law school. When you were in law school, Eric went to bolt law school, which I think is the most exciting in the 60s, the most exciting and glamorous time, and—but you said it was chaotic. Well, when I got there, the first day that I got there, there was a strike on the lower campus, and there was a very big distinction. Nobody in the law school participated. I think there were three of us who saw these picket lines and this demonstration, and we decided to join. But everybody else in the law school in those days—this was 1966—had coats and ties on. Yeah, there was the straight people. They were going for a career. Right. And they thought we were a little bit weird. Right. But by the time I left, the culture and the appearance and the politics of the school was altered dramatically forever. Yes. And the culture, right? You know, every—the impact on the culture. We're still feeling it today. Yeah. So did you want to practice civil rights law right out of the gate? Is that what you knew you wanted to do, or did it—was it an evolution, or— No, I went to law school kind of by default, because I didn't want to go and get a graduate degree and end up teaching. And I had been in the South in the civil rights movement, and I saw the impact that lawyers potentially could play. And I also knew, as a personal acquaintance, some of the more famous political lawyers of the 50s period of time who were my parents' friends. And I was very inspired by what they did. So when I went to law school, it was a very conscious decision that I wanted to do that as a means to engage in political work. Oh, great. So were your parents—people think this is a bad word, but I think this is a great word. Were they socialists? Were they—or— Well, socialists would be— Unionists, maybe? Socialists would be considered conservative in their lexicon. Right, right, right. But they were very active. They met when they were both working for WPA in the 30s in New York, and they progressed, and we ultimately left New York, and they moved to California because of the McCarthyist period, and they were hounded by the FBI. And so as a kid, you know, one of my jobs was to go to the door when the FBI knocked on the door and tell them my parents didn't want to talk to them. Wow. And that happened repeatedly. Really? And my father was like the resident—the resident leftist or progressive person in Palo Alto where I grew up. And, you know, he was always very outspoken and was a supporter in those days of recognizing China, which was a kind of like a voice in the wilderness. And my mother took in all kinds of stray people and was very supportive of all kinds of causes. And so, you know, I was sort of propelled in the direction by virtue of my parents' experiences. Those people—I remember those people from my childhood, and there was such—they led—there was such a delight. They led such texture—led such texture to the city. I mean, they really made it feel like a protein place where people were doing things, and there was intellectual activity afoot. And it wasn't intellectual activity of the academic sort of—the working-class intellectual activity. And you know, I don't think that exists so much anymore, the working-class intellectual. Well, I don't think so, I think, because these people were themselves college graduates where they came from somewhat intellectual, although my mother actually grew up in colonies—socialist colonies. But, you know, their experience was the 30s where everybody intermixed, and they developed very working-class sorts of values and aspirations. And even though they might have been more successful in later life, they didn't leave behind that kind of ideology, and they certainly conveyed that to me. So I am my parents' son, by all means. You're the product of their—you know, I just can't help but think if we had more—like the working-class intellectual or poet or the kinds of people I remember from my youth, we wouldn't have the disenfranchised—the disgruntlement we'd have now among the working-class who are caught in the torpor of a, what, a stagnant economy or whatever. I mean— Well, I've always struggled with that. You know, I wondered what happened to my generation of the 60s and their kids. And you know, many of my friends who I was in college with and law school I'm still in touch with, and their kids are doing very interesting things. But unlike the generation of the 30s, who became kind of the middle class of the 50s and 60s, we haven't really asserted ourselves as a group generationally in the way that I would have hoped we might. And so you have this horribly fragmented society, and I look around, I see what's going on in this world, and my dad, when he died at age 95, the last thing he said to me was, you know, I'm so sad that we really didn't change the world. And— But isn't it terrific that he thought he could? Well, he certainly did think he could for most of his life and never gave up the hope. You know, I took him to an anti-war demonstration when he was 94 in San Francisco, and he delighted everybody he met. He was a guy, you know, who was literally a legend in his time, and he was out there on a demonstration in San Francisco. Well, that's terrific. You know, that reminds me of some demonstrations that I've been on and where I've gotten the opportunity to speak to. I don't think there are any more living members, but members of the Lincoln Brigades, and they're great. They're the greatest, you know, guys. They have all the stories. They know everything. You know, they're the very underpinnings of everything I believe in anyway. Well, actually, you know, I mean, many of your listeners might not know what the Lincoln Brigade was, but the Lincoln Brigade was comprised of Americans who went as volunteers to fight in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, mid to late 1930s. And, you know, those were my parents' closest friends. But for the fact that my father had a very responsible series of jobs during that period, I'm sure he would have gone too. Right. It's, you know, the boyhood. I mean, I'm obviously a girl, but I mean, the childhood mystery of going to war for the right cause and doing the right thing. And it really is, I hope it's not forgotten. I hope people don't know what the Lincoln Brigade is and know what the Spanish Civil War was like. I mean, I hope they're still reading at least Hemingway or something like that. I hope. Yeah. I don't know. Who knows. So what are you doing? So now, what does your practice consist of? It's still civil rights, right? Well, basically, we do civil rights litigation. We do a lot of cases involving police brutality. We do cases involving mistreatment of prisoners in prisons. We do a variety of cases involving kids in public education, some in private education, but primarily public education, special education, and kids who need mental health treatment who aren't getting it. Right. Kids who are abused in those programs. For some reason, I don't fully understand, we've had a whole series of cases where special ed kids have been abused at their schools. Really? And most prominent of which was one where a little six-year-old boy was strapped into a chair every day and restrained there. And that case is coming up for trial in a few months. But we do those kinds of things. And then whatever else comes along, you know, most recently we got a lot of publicity around a case where I represented two women who were set upon by a police officer and arrested for kissing in a store. Oh, well, that's a very famous story, the lesbians from California, I think, weren't they from California? Right. They were sent to them? Yeah. Oh, bravo. You know, I mean, we get all kinds of things that come along that we do. I did, this last year, we did the Ho'opili and the Coa Ridge cases to try to block developments which we're going to destroy, are going to destroy the best agricultural land in the state of Hawaii for reasons that I can't fully comprehend. So, you know, when somebody comes to us with something and it's just something that tugs at our heart and, you know, really makes us want to jump in, we more often than not try to figure out a way to do that. A lot of those cases don't pay us, some do. We end up putting on a lot of money on cases. Right. But, you know, we somehow survive. You do. You know, that's astonishing. I remember, I had one interaction with William Kuntzler when I was in law school and he told me I should come and work in his office and he said I should come and work in his office, especially if I had a Lexus password, so I guess he was also in the position of however he could make a go of it, he made a go of it. I'll never forget my interaction with him, because I said, I'd love to be a civil rights lawyer, but I can't. I don't have money, whatever. He said, horse shit, very stentory and a very stentory invoice. He and I worked together on many things. We were very close and, you know, we used to have that discussion. How do you support yourself? Bill used to do, on occasion, he would go off and represent some mobster who would pay him and I would see this in rolls of $100 bills and that would sustain him for a few months and then go off and traipse around the south or the rest of the world doing things for which he wasn't getting paid. And, you know, basically you struggle to find sources of income. In my case, at least the last 15 years or so, I'm able to do it in large part because my wife, after we already had kids, went back to school and went to medical school and makes, you know, a good living as a doctor. That's terrific. So, you know, I'm able to basically work without having to worry about getting paid and I'm able to weather the storms because we do go through months and months where not a whole lot of money is coming in. Right. And the overhead, I have an office with three other lawyers who work for me, so, you know, we've got to pay the expenses, we've got to pay for expert witnesses, we've got to pay for depositions. Right. And, you know, the other thing about my practice here in Hawaii, for the most part, since I've been here, is that other lawyers refer cases to me, even cases which they know that there is a potential to make money on. Right. Even those cases, even the ones that you can make money on. And typically people, you know, people don't want to do police brutality cases. They don't want to do medical malpractice cases involving prisoners because those cases are valued less than other people's cases. That's really... So, you know, but in the long haul, we get a lot of those cases referred to us. Virtually all of our cases are referred to us from other lawyers, which is the best source. We get a lot of junk cases, but we do some of them. You know, I've taken cases, one I took up in the last five years up to the Hawaii Supreme Court was over the loss of a thousand dollars bail. And my deal with the client was if we won, we'd keep the money if we could get it refunded. And we did win. And it made a lot of money for a lot of other people because it reformed the whole process of forfeiting bail. But you know, we did it over a thousand dollars because we were offended. This guy was acquitted and he lost his bail money because he didn't do the proper paperwork at the proper time to claim it. But that's great. That's great. And you know, I don't understand, you know, I work for legal aid in the Prisoner's Rights Project. I work with prisoners. And it is true, prisons don't get adequate legal representation. I mean, typically they don't have much money and everybody's innocent. They don't have any money. Yeah, right. And you know, so that's one of the neediest groups of the most underserved groups of people. It is. They're also very difficult because a lot of them are con men. They're in prison for a reason. Right. And they have nothing better to do than to call you and write you and make demands. That's right. And you know, we get six, eight, ten letters a week from people in prison who want us to represent them. And we filter them because we have to. We can't possibly do all of them. But you know, they have a lot of things that happen to them that in my view are unjustifiable and are cruel. I agree. I think that the civil liberties are breached quite frequently with no mind, frankly. I'm going to take a quick break. Sure. We're going to take a quick break and we're going to come back and talk more about civil rights, civil liberties with Eric Seitz. I'm Mary Ann Sasaki. You're watching Life in the Law. With a variety of guests about various international issues, historical issues both here in Hawaii and abroad, range from security, human rights, ethics, and all sorts of other things. So please join me. I look forward to talking with you and seeing some of my guests. Hi. My name is Kim Lau. And I'm the host of Hawaii Rising. You can watch me every other Monday at 4 p.m. Hi. My name is Aaron Wills. You are watching thinktechhawaii.com. I am the host of the show, Rehabilitation Coming Soon. You can watch us live at thinktechhawaii.com at 11 a.m. on Tuesdays. I will see you there. You're watching thinktech Hawaii, meeting people we may not have otherwise met, helping us understand and appreciate the good things about Hawaii. Great content for Hawaii from thinktech. Hi. You're watching Life in the Law. I'm Mary Ann Sasaki. Delighted today to be talking to Eric Seitz. Do you prefer Eric A. Seitz or Eric Seitz? Doesn't matter. You know, it doesn't matter. So we were talking a little bit during the break, and we were talking about how you're viewed in the legal, well, not in the community at large, let's say, and the legal community because, I mean, you have a very distinct position, a unique position. And so, is there a blowback or? Well, let me just step back a little bit. When I first came here in 1973, I came ostensibly to teach at the new law school in the second year of the law school. When I got here, I was told by the dean that the job was no longer available to me because the regents had imposed some restrictions that I couldn't qualify. And you know, that was, in the aftermath, I had just finished a huge case in which my client was in the Navy and had been court-martialed in San Francisco for sabotaging an engine to prevent his aircraft carrier from going to Vietnam. And he was acquitted after a year-long proceedings. So, you know, I was identified with all of that very thoroughly and when I came to Hawaii, there were certainly not the welcome mats out for me and apparently somebody found out that the dean had hired me to teach, and so I never did get the job. So you was sabotaged. So that was the, exactly. So that was the first experience. And in those days there was also a residency requirement. So I couldn't just walk right in and start practicing. And then when I did practice, you know, through the first few years, I remember distinctly, you know, I went into chambers and a judge and the judge would say, okay, Mr. Seitz, why don't you just sit over there? And then opposing counsel would come in and they'd all talk about their kids going to school together at Punahou or Yolani, and when are we going to play golf again? And it was very obvious to me that I was the outsider. But, you know, as time progressed, I did a whole bunch of very controversial, very highly publicized cases in the 70s. I did a couple of huge military cases that received a lot of publicity. And I was involved a great deal in the Koholavi cases where people I represented virtually all of the people who were arrested by the Navy or the Coast Guard who went to Koholavi, except a few individuals, Walter, Riddie, among them, who wanted to represent themselves. So I was involved in all of the things that were going on that were on the forefront of any kind of political controversy. And the thing that, you know, I think probably got me in the door was that the judges and opposing counsel were very complimentary and very impressed with my abilities. And so I developed professional relationships with a lot of people which then led to them referring cases to me, cases that they thought needed to be done, but they didn't want to do them. So they really actually appreciated having somebody in the community who would do things that people thought needed to be done but they didn't want to do themselves. And so that enabled me to sort of take on a role where I handled certain kinds of cases that somebody else would really want to do on a regular basis. And of course those were cases that generated a lot of public interest and publicity and people would comment you're always in the papers, you're always on TV, you know, and there was some little bit jealousy and there was also some criticism about maybe promoting yourself. But I never have promoted myself at all. It's just the cases with controversy. The cases are interesting and the media likes to cover them. And so, you know, it becomes a situation where if there's something controversial going on, everybody just assumes in some way that I'm going to be involved. And, you know, for example, if there's a police shooting, inevitably the case gets referred to me. Now, I may not take it because I may have problems with a particular case, but I'm always basically given first right of refusal on these big controversial cases. How great to have that kind of reputation, I mean, to be viewed as the best. I mean, obviously you're viewed as the best, you should see Eric Seitz, he's the guy. Well, it's very, it is very complimentary. And I'm in a position now where a lot of cases will settle because people don't want to go to trial with me. So I'm able to help the clients get good outcomes without having to go to trial. Right. We struggle with certain places and with certain offices like the corporation council in the city and kind of Honolulu and some of the attorney generals. But, you know, again, I'm able to cut through a lot of those things and get good results for clients. And I also have been teaching now for the last several years since the obvious wafer became the dean at the law school here. One second. Avi, I've asked you on my show many times. I want you to come on. Go ahead. Avi has, you know, gotten me into teaching constitutional law. Oh, great. And actually the last time he and I taught the course together and it was just delightful and the students reveled in it. They had a wonderful time. But so I have, you know, a number of other things. So people come to me and say, well, something else happened. You're not involved in it. What do you think about it? And I'm asked to express opinions. And again, that's, you know, to me that's a compliment because they think that, you know, maybe I have something to contribute. It certainly is a compliment. You're an expert in probably the most fundamental, you know, building blocks of a civilized society. Well, you know. It is a compliment. You know, I've been involved in some very big cases. I was one of the lead counsel on the Felix litigation some years ago, which was a billion-dollar effort to reform children's mental health and special education. And, you know, at various times I've represented mayors and governors who have come to me for advice, sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes not. And, you know, so it's very interesting that I've developed a role where people may disagree with me politically, but they come to me because they want whatever I bring to the table as a lawyer. Yeah. Well, that's really heartening to hear that it's not, you know, it's not a matter of ostracism if you have, you hold a radical position. You can still be a, have a good place in society and have a respected place in society. It is. I'm very heartened by that. You know, and I had no idea how that would develop because when I was in law school and coming out of law school in the late 60s, my colleagues who felt the same way as I did struggled to figure out how are we going to make a living and a great number of them couldn't make a living and just gave up practicing law because they were so frustrated which was kind of a tragedy. Now, that also coincided, I think, with changes in the times. Absolutely. But I've been fortunate that I've had people who've supported me who've helped me along the way and I, you know, my credibility speaks for itself and that's very nice because one of the things I've always told people is that if you're going to be in a controversial position and this is something the old left used to practice as well and preach, you have to be above repute yourself. That's right. That's right. You have to be honest. Jesus' wife. Exactly. You cannot mislead people. You cannot be in a position where people distrust you. Or Bob Dylan, to live outside the law, you must be honest. That's... Correct. And so, you know, that's always been very important to me. No one has ever accused me of making a misrepresentation or lying and, you know, or doing something underhandedly. I always tell my clients if we're going to pursue a case, we've got to take the high road to pursue it and do it, you know, do what we do openly. Oh, that's terrific here because, you know, I think clients encourage the... You know, also, well, I'm in business, so it's a different ball game. But they don't understand that we're officers of the court and not more than officers of the court. We're moral beings. We have integrity and we actually enter the law for these... Because we had these qualities, frankly. So that's great to hear that you can practice in such a hard area and still retain your integrity. It's, you know, it's always a challenge. I have been hauled up before the Disciplinary Committee on a couple of occasions on the most prominent of those occasions. I was referred to the Disciplinary Counsel's Office after I made some uncomplimentary remarks to the media about the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court of the State of Hawaii in a very controversial murder case, which I ultimately won. And in that case, we told the Disciplinary Counsel, you know, I made these remarks. They're critical of the court, but we stand by them. And if anybody wants to proceed against us, we'll cite the First Amendment and the truth. Yeah, I don't see the ethical violation there, really, to be critical. I mean, you're not compromising. Well, I said some pretty nasty things about them, but... Oh, good for you. You know, eventually, the case went up to the Ninth Circuit, and the Ninth Circuit said virtually the same things in their language that I had said to the media earlier. And so everybody backed off. It was very interesting. That's very satisfying. It was satisfying. So do you like the courtroom? I mean, I like to write. I'm a paper writer. I'm a brief writer. But do you like... Does the courtroom atmosphere give you... excite you and give you energy? Yeah, for the most part. I'm very at home. I'm very, you know... I'm very jazzed when I go into court. One of the things we do is we prepare very well so that, you know, that we don't have kinds of mistakes that undermine the confidence that people have in us. I love to do appellate work. We do all our own appellate work. So I've argued before the Ninth Circuit probably 50 times, and before the Hawaii Supreme Court, almost an equal number. And, you know, I always have good intellectual experiences. Right. And when I came here, actually, the federal court consisted of Judge Sam King and Martin Pence. And it was, by far, the most intellectual and most challenging and best federal court in the country. Really? And, you know, after the fact, people used to tell me that Judge Pence and Judge King used to argue about who would get my cases, because I would bring these, you know, draft cases or other cases into their court, and it was very different than the run-of-the-mill. And they used to love the intellectual exchange, and people used to come to arguments. And, you know, these were two very smart guys, and we used to have arguments which is just like what they told you in law school would be. Right, exactly. That's the fun part. Right. If you can get it, but it's so rare, right? Right. So, you know, I've had enough of those kinds of experiences, similar kinds of experiences before the Hawaii Supreme Court, which is conducts arguments at a very high level. Really? That's interesting. That it's been, you know, it's been sufficiently stimulating that it keeps generating interest and excitement. And what about the new talent coming down the pike? What do you see? Do you see there a different way of practicing, or do they have different expectations? It's disappointing to me that I think the collegiality that I saw and developed when I first came here, you know, over the first 20, 25 or so years, doesn't seem to be there. Really? I think that the younger generation of lawyers are not as cordial, as respectful. They're much more interested in winning and winning at any cost. And, you know, everybody now has to confirm everything in writing and everybody distrusts one another. And it makes for a very less comfortable kind of occupation where you have to look over your shoulder and worry who's coming for you next. Well, you know, you're old school, Eric Sites, and I like that. I say that in the best possible way. I mean, there's not enough, there's really not enough people behaving in this way. And you remind me of my youth and you remind me of just the things, the kinds of political positions that I've always loved and the kinds of people who I've met through them. So I really appreciate your coming today. It was fun. Yes, and if you have any parting words or be more collegial, young folks. Well, you know, I would love to encourage people to do the kind of work that we do because it's so satisfying. Do it. The clients are wonderful and, you know, you get a lot of gratification. And it's righteous. It's the righteous thing. But, you know, there are not a lot of people who want to take the chance, the economic risks, the political risks to be associated with controversial causes of action. And my hope is we can find a way to do that more. And, you know, my students at the law school, when we talk about some of the constitutional law cases that I've been involved in, seem to be more excited and maybe there's some hope that, you know, that they want to do these kinds of things themselves. But I think the path to doing that is not easy these days. No, it's because of the great cost of law school and... And practicing. Yeah. But it's very rewarding. So, yes, go and try to do the right thing. Don't do as I did. Do as I say. Do as Mr. Seitz did. And if you're just a practicing lawyer, contribute to those local causes that you feel are important. At least you can be contributing for the right thing for the right reasons. So thank you again. Thank you so much. Thank you. And I'm Mary Ann Sasaki. I'm watching Life in the Law, Wednesdays 1 to 1.30. I look forward to seeing you next week.