Lawyers in the subcontinent are no shrinking violets. In Lahore, lawyers protesting Musharraf’s politically-motivated sacking of Pakistan’s chief justice were roughed up by riot police:

Geo TV and its arch rival Aaj TV… went… off the air for several hours after they declined the instructions from the [Pakistani government] to stop coverage of the bloody lathi charge on the agitating lawyers… Photographs of [a bleeding lawyer] flashing a victory sign with his blood-soaked hands were splashed on front pages of the newspapers. [Link]

Lawyers across the country have staged angry protests since the government decided on Friday to suspend Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary… the move to oust Chaudhary pointed to government determination to control the judiciary in the run-up to elections… Chaudhary… took up several rights cases… involving enforced disappearances… Human rights groups say at least 400 people have disappeared since Pakistan joined the U.S.-led war on terrorism… [Link]

In Ghaziabad, lawyers beat up the alleged Nithari serial killers in January:

A mob, mainly comprising of lawyers, beat up Nithari serial killing accused Moninder Singh Pandher and his cook Surendra Koli, at the Ghaziabad district court complex today… [Link]

These incidents are reminiscent of the fistfights which break out in the South Korean, Taiwanese, Russian, Ukrainian and Jordanian legislatures and which used to break out in the U.S. Senate.

On one hand, you think of American lawyers as genteel in person, albeit not in tactics. On the other, I admire the lawyers standing up to Musharraf’s power grab. They’re doing in Pakistan what college students used to do well in the U.S. Can you even remember the last time outraged American professionals took to the streets against a regime which sacrificed democracy for repression and spread terror pr0n to maintain power?