“Now for the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey used to say.
Our tale resumes in the pivotal year of 1967. The Bar Association of the State of New Hampshire (BASNH), a creature born of the Legislature 94 years earlier and still a purely voluntary association, appeared before the General Court with a seemingly modest petition. Under Article 6 of its 1873 charter, the BASNH requested three things:
- Permission to change its name to the “New Hampshire Bar Association” (NHBA).
- Removal of the $500,000 ceiling on real-estate holdings, replacing it with unlimited authority to acquire property.
- Implicit legislative blessing for a new statute, RSA 292:1-a, that would for the first time explicitly authorize corporations “for the provision of legal services.”
All three requests were granted without fanfare in the 1967 session. To the casual observer, these were housekeeping measures. To those who have since examined the paper trail, they were the opening moves in a meticulously planned coup d’état against the New Hampshire Constitution—one executed in bad faith by a small cadre of BASNH officers in secret coordination with sitting members of the Supreme Court.
The endgame? The forced unification of the bar in 1968, the creation of a compulsory dues system, and the birth of a permanent, unaccountable revenue-generating monopoly that violates:
- Part I, Article 1 (All government power is derived from the people, by consent),
- Part I, Article 12 (no involuntary taxation without consent),
- Part I, Article 15 (due process and right to justice),
- Part I, Article 29 (laws may be suspended only by the Legislature),
- Part I, Article 37 (separation of powers), and
- Part II, Article 83 (the 1903 anti-monopoly amendment: “Monopolies are contrary to the genius of a free state and ought not to be allowed”).
What follows is the documented prelude to that coup.
History of NHBA Lobbying Efforts Before 1967
To comprehend the magnitude of the betrayal, one must first understand what the BASNH deliberately did not do for its first 94 years.
From its founding on July 2, 1873, until the seismic shift of 1967–1968, the Bar Association of the State of New Hampshire engaged in virtually no formal lobbying of the Legislature. It was, by design and tradition, a gentlemen’s club—voluntary, sleepy, and politically neutered.
Key Characteristics of the Pre-1967 Era
- Non-Political by Intent: Meetings were social and scholarly. Attendance rarely exceeded one-third of the membership (which hovered between 700 and 750 by the 1960s). There was no legislation committee, no bill-tracking operation, no official positions on pending statutes.
- Constitutional Restraint: The pre-1968 constitution of the BASNH explicitly limited its objects to “the advancement of jurisprudence, the promotion of integrity in the legal profession, and the facilitation of the administration of justice.” Political advocacy was not among them.
- Informal Influence Only: Individual members—often former judges or prominent Concord attorneys—might quietly advise legislators when asked, but the association itself never spoke with one voice on public policy. As late as the 1968 unification hearings, opponents correctly noted that a unified bar would gain the dangerous new power to “take a position and publicly express its views on pending legislation”—a power the voluntary BASNH had never exercised.
In short, before 1967, the BASNH was harmless because it was powerless.
The 1967 Legislative Package: Laying the Foundation
In a single session, everything changed.
RSA 292:1-a (“Legal Services”) was enacted in 1967 specifically to give the soon-to-be-renamed NHBA a modern corporate charter that would survive the coming judicial takeover. Simultaneously, the Legislature:
- Approved the name change from BASNH to NHBA,
- Removed all limits on real-estate accumulation (a foreshadowing of the lucrative Bar Center and later investments), and
- Blessed the expanded purposes now codified under the new statute.
These measures were not coincidental. Internal NHBA correspondence from 1966–1967 (still preserved in the association’s own archives) reveals that the same small group drafting the unification petition to the Supreme Court was also orchestrating the legislative package. The statute and the name-change resolution were deliberately synchronized so that, on the day the Supreme Court issued its unification order in 1968, the NHBA would already possess unlimited corporate powers and an airtight statutory shield.
The Payoff: Forced Unification and the Birth of Compulsory Dues
With the legislative chess pieces in place, the conspirators turned to the judiciary. In 1968 the NHBA petitioned the Supreme Court to make membership (and dues) mandatory for every lawyer in the state. Despite a razor-thin referendum (231–188 in favor) and vigorous constitutional objections citing every article listed above, the Court—on December 31, 1968—declared unification effective for a “three-year trial period” (In re Unification of the New Hampshire Bar, 109 N.H. 260).
The trial period was theater. In 1972, the Court made unification permanent, cementing a system in which:
- Every New Hampshire attorney is forced to fund the NHBA whether he or she agrees with its positions or not (a private tax in violation of Part I, Art. 12).
- The judicial branch unilaterally created and now oversees a private corporation that lobbies the legislative branch (violation of separation of powers, Part I, Art. 37).
- A single association enjoys exclusive control over admission to the legal profession and the continuing legal education market (a textbook monopoly forbidden by Part II, Art. 83).
The Deep State Takes Root
From that moment forward, the NHBA transformed from a drowsy voluntary club into the most powerful lobbying organization in Concord. It now maintains a full-time legislative staff, testifies on hundreds of bills each biennium, and routinely advocates positions that shield its members from competition, limit citizens’ access to courts, and expand judicial-branch funding—all financed by mandatory dues extracted from every practicing attorney.
What began in 1967 as a quiet legislative favor has metastasized into a permanent, self-funding apparatus that operates above democratic accountability—exactly the kind of entrenched, revenue-driven syndicate that meets every element of racketeering when viewed through the lens of the people’s constitution.
The Deep State in New Hampshire was not imported from Washington. It was home-grown in Concord, brick by brick, statute by statute, beginning with three “innocent” requests in 1967.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the rest of the story—so far.
Authors’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of Grok Media, LLC, GraniteGrok.com, its sponsors, readers, authors, or advertisers.
Got Something to Say, We Want to Hear It. Comment or submit Op-Eds to steve@granitegrok.com
