The organized bar proved cowardly in crises despite its aggressive rhetoric about professional honor.

Evidence

This was not necessarily a bad thing. The behavior of the organized bar, compared to its ballyhoo, has been weak and retrograde. It does not take much courage to thunder invective against shysters and ambulance chasers. But when justice or civil liberties were in genuine crisis, the organized bar shrank in on itself; courage was sadly lacking. During the McCarthy period, the ABA showed real eagerness for purges and loyalty oaths. The House of Delegates recommended disciplinary action, and even expulsion, for lawyers who were communists, or who advocated Marxism-​Leninism. But as the bar expanded and took in a more diverse mix of lawyers, it began to change its general orientation. Indeed, toward the end of the twentieth century, the ABA came out in favor of a moratorium on the death penalty, which no doubt startled many people on the right. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 4048