Raoul Cantero III, who went beyond the call of duty while defending an unrepentant terrorist, is not the best choice for appointment to the Florida Supreme Court.

The right to counsel is vital to the American system of justice, so it follows that the sins of a client should not be held against his lawyers. Not even if the client is a convicted, unrepentant terrorist like Orlando Bosch. If Raoul Cantero III had done no more for Bosch than plead his case in court and before the Immigration and Naturalization Service, then Bosch would not be relevant to Cantero's current candidacy for appointment to the Florida Supreme Court.

But there are audiotapes showing that Cantero did more than plead and argue the law. He took to talk radio in Miami 13 years ago, when Bosch was facing deportation, to describe him as a "Cuban patriot." Cantero rationalized a 1968 crime for which a Miami federal court had convicted Bosch -- the firing of a bazooka at a Polish ship docked at Miami -- as "a political statement" that "didn't hurt anybody and it didn't cause any damage."

Of course, that was before the United States was so terribly victimized by fanatical terrorists whose disdain for innocent people is indistinguishable from that of Bosch's anti-Castro extremist movement.

Cantero would probably be more circumspect today. But he has yet to repudiate what he said in 1989. That might be difficult for him to do, considering that Jeb Bush, the governor who interviewed him and other court candidates Monday, also espoused Bosch's release in 1989, and that Bush's father, the president, foreclosed Bosch's deportation by pardoning the convicted terrorist.

Venezuela had arrested Bosch in 1976 for the in-flight bombing of a civilian Cuban airliner that killed 73 people, but he was acquitted after 11 years and returned without a visa -- which had been denied -- to the United States, where he was jailed again as a parole violator. Though Bosch has always denied complicity in the airliner bombing, he endorsed it because, "War is a competition of cruelties." Osama bin Laden could as easily say the same thing.

Cantero's apparent indifference to violence that is anti-Castro in motive raises a question concerning his outspoken views against abortion. "Abortions kill children," he wrote to the Miami Herald. Abortion protests sometimes turn violent, occasionally lethal, and the courts have to deal with them. Two physicians have been murdered in Florida; one of the convicted killers is serving life, and another is on death row. On appeal in such a case, would Cantero be bound by the law? Or would he rationalize that the end perhaps justified the means?

There are four other competent candidates for Bush to consider. The governor no doubt is aware of the opportunity to make history by appointing Florida's first Hispanic justice. The nominating commission -- comprised for the first time entirely of his appointees -- had to be aware of that, too. Apart from the issues noted here, Cantero is qualified and would be a plausible choice. But by appointing him, Bush would be inviting international attention to Cantero's extra-jurisprudential advocacy of a convicted terrorist.

"The security of this nation is affected by its ability to urge credible other nations to refuse aid and shelter to terrorists, whose target we too often become," wrote Joe D. Whitley, an acting associate attorney general, in an ultimately futile order to deport Bosch in 1989. "We could not shelter Dr. Bosch and maintain our credibility in this respect."

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