Cohen v. Hurley

We are called upon to decide whether the State of New York may, consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment, disbar an attorney who, relying on his state privilege against self-incrimination, has refused to answer material questions of a duly authorized investigating authority relating to alleged professional misconduct.1

*119The issue arises in the context of the so-called Brooklyn “ambulance chasing” Judicial Inquiry which this Court had before it in Anonymous v. Baker, 360 U. S. 287. The origins, authority, and nature of the Inquiry have already been sufficiently described in our opinion in that…