From the Editor: Judy Martinez was the 143rd president of the American Bar Association, serving in that position in 2019-20, the year that commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, which guarantees and protects a woman’s right to vote. Here is what she had to say about Scott:
There are those lawyers whom the American Bar Association changes, and then there are a few who change the American Bar Association. Scott LaBarre was one of the latter. Scott not only made us think differently about disability rights and individual dignity, but he made us think smarter on so many levels, on so many fronts.
My friendship with Scott began many years ago when I was first enveloped in his hardy and contagious laughter and his irreproachable humor. There was no dueling with Scott on the wit front; we all know that. He met his victims more than halfway coming and going. There was no one safe from the warmth of his teasing or the genuinely sweet way (and I know Scott would scoff at that description), but he was genuinely sweet yet strategic in how he made you want to be his friend.
The descriptors that I often think about when I think about Scott as a leader are representative, visionary, statesperson, public servant. Scott was a lawyer servant, the kind of member of the legal profession that the preamble of the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct speaks to and urges each of us lawyers to be. In that regard Scott understood, probably more than most, that, as the preamble states, “lawyers play a vital role in the preservation of society.” And it goes on to say, “As public citizen, a lawyer should seek improvement of the law, access to the legal system, the administration of justice, and the quality of service rendered by the legal profession. All lawyers should devote professional time and resources and use civic influence to ensure equal access to our system of justice for all those who because of economic or social barriers cannot afford or secure adequate legal counsel.” And devote Scott did. I was privileged to observe the depth of Scott’s devotion when, in the same year we served as presidents of two national Bar Associations, me with the ABA and Scott as president of the National Association of Blind Lawyers. It was around that table with all the other National Bar Association presidents that I came to understand that Scott’s service was rooted the same as the service of the most effective lawyer leaders. His service always had been and always was rooted in doing good for others and the greater good, and was never about himself. Scott was a lawyer’s lawyer, a leader’s leader, whether it was his service on the ABA Board of Governors or its executive committee, as chair of the ABA Commission on Disability Rights, or most recently as chair of the Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Divisions. Scott made a difference with his wise counsel, his tough decision-making, and his collaborative approach.
But likely his greatest professional impact within the ABA was his service and, perhaps better said, his courage, as he walked to the well of the ABA House of Delegates on more than one occasion and educated his over six hundred delegate/colleagues as to what a society that sets its values on the cornerstone of equality really must demand of its people in government and in everyday life. The delegates listened, and the House as a body adopted the policies that Scott brought to us for consideration.
Scott made a home in the ABA, but then he did something else. He invited so many other leaders to join him there, and for that the ABA will be always richer for them.
As current ABA President Deborah Enix-Ross noted in the ABA Journal recently upon Scott’s passing, “Scott was a top lawyer in the disability law arena, but he was so much more.” It is the “so much more” that is what each of us will remember when we think of Scott in the days, weeks, and months to come; the “so much more” that Anahit and Karter and Craig and Deborah and Mr. and Mrs. LaBarre can best understand; the “so much more” that made each of our individual journeys all the richer for having had Scott in our lives.
We will miss him in the American Bar Association. We know you also will, and we just hope that we will all live up to everything that Scott believed in, what he worked for, and what he lived each day of his life in promise and in purpose. Thank you.