State supreme court decision ends years of effort by the disgraced former journalist to become a lawyer in California

The California supreme court has refused Stephen Glass admission to the state bar, ruling that the disgraced former journalist had failed to rehabilitate himself.

Monday's ruling followed years of effort by Glass, a graduate of Georgetown law school, to become a lawyer in California. The court overturned a state judge’s 2010 decision in favor of admitting Glass to the bar.

“Many of his efforts from the time of his exposure in 1998 until the 2010 hearing, however, seem to have been directed primarily at advancing his own well-being rather than returning something to the community,” the justices wrote in a unanimous ruling.

“His evidence did not establish that he engaged in truly exemplary conduct over an extended period. We conclude that on this record he has not sustained his heavy burden of demonstrating rehabilitation and fitness for the practice of law.”



Glass, 41, fabricated material for more than 40 articles for the New Republic and other publications in the mid-1990s. He was discovered and fired in 1998 at the end of a chain of events that began when a reporter at a rival publication tried to retrace his work and could not.

Glass passed the California bar examination in 2006 and fought to gain moral standing to join the bar. That effort included a 2010 hearing in which he called friends and former colleagues to testify to his rehabilitation.

A committee of California bar examiners argued that Glass had not done enough, calling him “a pervasive and documented liar”.

The court ruling revisits Glass’s exploits as a fabulist. “A notable 1996 article was entitled Taxis and the Meaning of Work,” the justices write:

It was Glass’s first cover article and one he viewed as “key” to his successful period of writing for The New Republic. Its theme was that Americans, and in particular, African-Americans, were no longer willing to work hard or to take on employment they consider menial. The article falsely recounted as factual a supposed encounter between Glass and three entirely fabricated characters, one a limousine driver, one a taxi cab driver, and one a criminal.

The ruling also recaps Glass’s side of the story:



According to Glass, during his childhood and young adulthood his parents exerted extremely intense and cruel pressure upon him to succeed academically and socially. Glass felt that The New Republic offered an extremely competitive atmosphere and that his journalistic efforts there failed to make a mark sufficient to ensure his retention after his year term had elapsed. It was after a visit to the family home, when his parents berated him for his apparent failure even in what they considered the worthless career of journalism, that he began fabricating material for publication.

The ruling quotes from testimony on Glass’s behalf by former New Republic owner Marty Peretz, who told the state bar examiners: “I actually find your pursuing him an act of stalking.”



Martin Peretz, who owned and managed The New Republic at the time of the fabrications, testified on Glass’s behalf and had developed a charitable view of his misconduct by the time of the California State Bar hearing. He blamed himself and, even more, the magazine's editors for encouraging Glass to write zany, shocking articles and for failing to recognize the improbability of some of Glass’s stories. [...] He would not rule out hiring Glass again as a journalist.

That and similar testimony were not enough to win the case. “Glass’s deceit also was motivated by professional ambition, betrayed a vicious, mean spirit and a complete lack of compassion for others, along with arrogance and prejudice against various ethnic groups,” the justices wrote in their concluding analysis. “In all these respects, his misconduct bore directly on his character in matters that are critical to the practice of law.” [...]



“Honesty is absolutely fundamental in the practice of law.”



