Legal Career
After being honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1959, Lee returned to Louisiana to manage his father's restaurant, The House of Lee. Lee was elected president of the New Orleans Chapter of the Louisiana Restaurant Association in 1964. His leadership was instrumental in the peaceful racial integration of New Orleans restaurants, in compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
At this time, he also attended Loyola University New Orleans School of Law, where he was elected president of the student chapter of the Bar Association. Lee graduated in 1967 and started a small law practice in Gretna with Loyola classmate Marion Edwards (not to be confused with the brother of future Governor Edwin Washington Edwards - whom Lee was a very avid supporter of - who shares the same name).
Lee was appointed as a magistrate judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in 1971. He was elected President of the National Council of United States Magistrates in 1973. He was invited to join the congressional delegation to the People's Republic of China in 1972, which was led by House Majority Leader Hale Boggs from Louisiana, and House Minority Leader and future U.S. President Gerald Ford. He resigned as a Federal Magistrate in 1975 and was appointed Parish Attorney for Jefferson Parish.
Read more about this topic: Harry Lee (sheriff)
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or career:
“If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)