Not quite our geographic coverage.. but worth noting that Law.com have published two articles concerning the election fallout (no pun intended) in Iran..
The first published June 18th is entitled
Iranian American Lawyers React to Election Fallout
The ongoing political protests in Iran are being closely followed by Iranian American lawyers at Am Law firms.
"Many Iranian American lawyers, including myself, have spent a lot of billable hours these past few days glued to the news trying to find out what’s going on," says Robert Babayi, an IP litigation partner with Venable in Washington, D.C.
Babayi, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1977, two years before the Iran revolution deposed the shah, has been active in the Iranian American community for the past 20 years. He helped found the Iranian American Bar Association (IABA) in November 2000 and has served as the organization’s president.
While many Iranian Americans support the reformist platform of Mir Hossein Mousavi–even if that support only extends to the election protestors–in the past, Babayi says, the community has been reticent about getting involved in the political affairs of Iran…… see full story by linking on headline
The second published today…..
Sanctions Stifle Iranian Lawyers’ Access to U.S. Support
Brian Baxter
The American Lawyer
June 22, 2009
When Pakistani lawyers took to the streets of Islamabad a year ago to urge former president Pervez Musharraf to restore the rule of law, colleagues in the U.S. rallied outside a Manhattan courthouse to show their support.
But for Iranian lawyers, getting that kind of backing here hasn’t been so easy. The U.S. has no formal diplomatic relations with Iran and the State Department considers the country a supporter of terrorism.
Venable IP litigation partner Robert Babayi, who emigrated to the U.S. from Iran in 1977, says Iran’s legal system is a combination of Islamic sharia’a law and civil law established under the shah. Although judges and lawyers have independence from the state, hardliners are trying to create a "quasi-parallel" bar system, whereby the regime would takeover issuing law licenses. ……….see full story by linking on headline
"That has caused a lot of fear within the Iranian legal system," he says. "Lawyers want to retain their independence and have been fighting an uphill battle with the government over this."
Babayi, who’s involved in an exchange program run by the State Department that brings Iranian lawyers and academics to the U.S., says many of the Iranian lawyers who participated in the three-week program, including the dean of the University of Tehran, were pessimistic about coming to a country they felt harbored ill intentions towards Iran.
But by the end of the program, their attitudes had changed.
"They would tell me the regime had brainwashed them to believe that the U.S. was their enemy," Babayi says. "Once they came here and saw things with their own eyes, they saw that wasn’t the case."
