After pleading no contest to charges of tax evasion and bribery, former U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew faced disbarment from the State of Maryland.
disbarment
Definition
The revocation of a lawyer’s license to practice law, usually as a result of a violation of professional ethics.
Disbarment may be imposed by the state bar association if a lawyer commits an offense that directly relates to his or her fitness to practice law. Such offenses may include dishonesty, fraud, felony, substance abuse, abuse of public office, or “conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.”
Definition from Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary
See: disbar
Definition provided by Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary.
August 19, 2010, 5:14 pm
“The threat of disbarment and the loss of professional standing, professional reputation, and of livelihood are powerful forms of compulsion to make a lawyer relinquish the privilege [against self-incrimination]. That threat is indeed as powerful an instrument of compulsion as ‘the use of legal process to force from the lips of the accused individual the evidence necessary to convict him….’ As we recently stated in Miranda v. State of Arizona, ‘In this Court, the privilege has consistently been accorded a liberal construction.’ … We find no room in the privilege against self-incrimination for classifications of people so as to deny it to some and extend it to others. Lawyers are not excepted from the words ‘No person…shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself’; and we can imply no exception.” J. Douglas, Spevack v. Klein, 385 U.S. 511, 516 (1967).
