A shyster is defined as a person who acts in a disreputable, dishonest, unethical or unscrupulous manner.[1] This most often applies to those involved in the legal profession (particularly lawyers and judges), though it can also apply – albeit to a lesser extent – to politicians, those who hold other public offices or are involved in other professions.
The application of the term to lawyers and judges most often occurs when defense lawyers representing criminals use questionable, specious and dishonest tactics in the courtroom to get their clients acquitted, or when corrupt judges, based on political and ideological reasons and personal feelings (such as in Dred Scott v. Sandford, Abington School District v. Schempp, Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges) instead of adhering to federal, state or local laws, engage in judicial activism, illegally attempt to legislate from the bench or otherwise play fast and loose with the law to suit their personal biases.
Among those notable in the legal profession to whom the term shyster applies include lawyers Clarence Darrow, Bill Clinton (also former Arkansas Governor and US President), Hillary Rodham Clinton (also former First Lady and Secretary of State under Barack Obama), Morris Dees (a former attorney for the KKK and the co-founder of leftist hate group the Southern Poverty Law Center), Michael Avenatti and Eric Holder (the latter also serving as United States Attorney General under Obama) and the membership of the liberal American Bar Association, and the liberal judges on the Supreme Court of the United States who ruled in favor of same-sex "marriage" in Obergefell v. Hodges as well as activist federal judges who illegally overturned various state laws outlawing same-sex "marriage", abortion, racial segregation and other liberal sacred cows for political and personal reasons.