4 ms·

I have plenty of experience with lawyers who graduated from high-ranked law schools. I won't claim to speak for everyone, but at least in my experience, discuss

by wfo 11y ago

I have plenty of experience with lawyers who graduated from high-ranked law schools. I won't claim to speak for everyone, but at least in my experience, discussing moral considerations or moral consequences of the law with them is like talking to a wall. Something happens to them in law school: they concern themselves with only what can be argued in court and precedent, probably because they must in order to do their jobs. I have heard so many different paraphrases of the quote "right and wrong don't have anything to do with the law or a courtroom" from so many different lawyers. I can only imagine the moral hardening that must take place to work in a the kafkaesque legal system that generates so much horrible injustice every day almost by design and sleep well at night; the claim of a lack of ability to moral reason is not really an attack on the character of lawyers, but rather a cry of sympathy for people doing adapting as they must to survive and still work in the field. People who inflict enormous amounts of suffering upon others as part of their jobs (prosecutors, cops, prison guards, criminals, judges) develop these attitudes as a defense mechanism.

anseljh 11y ago
Some smart people are bad people. It sounds like you met them. Or maybe they thought you were trolling them? How many public defenders have you had similar conversations with? You might get different results.
- wfo 11y ago
  You're right; zero public defenders. And rather I don't think they are bad people, just realistic about the nature of the system they work in.
pdabbadabba 11y ago
> I have plenty of experience with lawyers who graduated from high-ranked law schools. I won't claim to speak for everyone, but at least in my experience, discussing moral considerations or moral consequences of the law with them is like talking to a wall. You should find some different people to talk to. This attitude is not only not the norm among my friends, colleagues, and classmates (virtually all of whom went to good law schools), this attitude is almost totally unknown to me. It's true, of course, that lawyers have to understand and accept that legal outcomes are not always moral outcomes. So it's true that "right and wrong don't have anything to do with the law or a courtroom" in the narrow sense that when law and morality conflict, law typically carries the day in court. But don't mistake this practical understanding for a lack of moral awareness more broadly. Believe me, nobody knows better the injustices perpetrated by our legal system than lawyers. This, after all, is why many people become lawyers. But also consider that some of the injustices widely believed to be generated by our legal system (though certainly not all, such as racially-biased mass incarceration) are, in fact, not injustices but are simply widely misunderstood. I would say that legal reporting is about on par with science reporting in terms of the misinformation and half truths that get spread around. Also remember that a lot of the injustices widely attributed to the U.S. judicial system (and here I am talking about mass incarceration) are not primarily products of the judicial system. They are products of the legislative system (i.e., Congress), which the judiciary is constitutionally bound to obey. Lawyers and judges have very few tools to minimize this damage while also performing the job that our system of government assigns them.
- wfo 11y ago
  To your last point, I would argue the injustices are not misunderstood they are in fact injustices, and I'm talking about details far beyond racial discrimination, though I don't mean to minimize the consequences of that. The vast majority of our cases are settled through plea bargains; this is in essence a coerced (we must assume false -- if we are to accept innocent until proven guilty, none of these cases are proved) confession, little different from in banana republics where your signed confession is required for the authorities to recall their torture or confinement. Once a prosecutor has you in his sights your choices are to fight back, demand a trial, and have the prosecutor throw the book at you and ask for the maximum most extreme sentence, try to lock you in a cage for years to be repeatedly beaten and raped and destroy your ability to succeed in society for having the audacity to demand your rights, or accept the punishment the justice system has decided to dole out to you with a plea. So we trust prosecutors to only push cases they truly believe are just. But the promotion scheme for prosecutors is such that those prosecutors who believe any winnable case is a just one get the most convictions, and therefore the most power. And consider juries; as a juror you are instructed (falsely) that you are required to judge a case simply on the facts and that you must leave your ability to be a human being and do moral reasoning at the door (hence, morality has no place in a courtroom -- the jurors, who decide the case, are explicitly told they may not use it), and lawyers are even legally prevented from informing the jurors of their rights. I think you're very right about the source of these problems -- they come from lawyers in so much as almost all of our legislators are lawyers, trained into this profession and having gone through all of this before they create laws. But it's not the trial lawyers or judges who created these issues, and many of them get into the game in order to make things better. But I think to succeed in a system requires acceptance of the system; it changes you. I'll concede that it's likely there are many, many people in the legal profession for whom my analysis isn't particularly accurate and I'm encouraged by your vigorous repudiation of my pessimism (I don't want to be right), but I think there's some truth there to what I'm saying. And I'm not suggesting that there is an easy solution; the problems are emergent, systemic, and very deep.

by wfo 11y ago

anseljh 11y ago

Some smart people are bad people. It sounds like you met them. Or maybe they thought you were trolling them? How many public defenders have you had similar conversations with? You might get different results.

wfo 11y ago
You're right; zero public defenders. And rather I don't think they are bad people, just realistic about the nature of the system they work in.

pdabbadabba 11y ago

> I have plenty of experience with lawyers who graduated from high-ranked law schools. I won't claim to speak for everyone, but at least in my experience, discussing moral considerations or moral consequences of the law with them is like talking to a wall. You should find some different people to talk to. This attitude is not only not the norm among my friends, colleagues, and classmates (virtually all of whom went to good law schools), this attitude is almost totally unknown to me. It's true, of course, that lawyers have to understand and accept that legal outcomes are not always moral outcomes. So it's true that "right and wrong don't have anything to do with the law or a courtroom" in the narrow sense that when law and morality conflict, law typically carries the day in court. But don't mistake this practical understanding for a lack of moral awareness more broadly. Believe me, nobody knows better the injustices perpetrated by our legal system than lawyers. This, after all, is why many people become lawyers. But also consider that some of the injustices widely believed to be generated by our legal system (though certainly not all, such as racially-biased mass incarceration) are, in fact, not injustices but are simply widely misunderstood. I would say that legal reporting is about on par with science reporting in terms of the misinformation and half truths that get spread around. Also remember that a lot of the injustices widely attributed to the U.S. judicial system (and here I am talking about mass incarceration) are not primarily products of the judicial system. They are products of the legislative system (i.e., Congress), which the judiciary is constitutionally bound to obey. Lawyers and judges have very few tools to minimize this damage while also performing the job that our system of government assigns them.

wfo 11y ago
To your last point, I would argue the injustices are not misunderstood they are in fact injustices, and I'm talking about details far beyond racial discrimination, though I don't mean to minimize the consequences of that. The vast majority of our cases are settled through plea bargains; this is in essence a coerced (we must assume false -- if we are to accept innocent until proven guilty, none of these cases are proved) confession, little different from in banana republics where your signed confession is required for the authorities to recall their torture or confinement. Once a prosecutor has you in his sights your choices are to fight back, demand a trial, and have the prosecutor throw the book at you and ask for the maximum most extreme sentence, try to lock you in a cage for years to be repeatedly beaten and raped and destroy your ability to succeed in society for having the audacity to demand your rights, or accept the punishment the justice system has decided to dole out to you with a plea. So we trust prosecutors to only push cases they truly believe are just. But the promotion scheme for prosecutors is such that those prosecutors who believe any winnable case is a just one get the most convictions, and therefore the most power. And consider juries; as a juror you are instructed (falsely) that you are required to judge a case simply on the facts and that you must leave your ability to be a human being and do moral reasoning at the door (hence, morality has no place in a courtroom -- the jurors, who decide the case, are explicitly told they may not use it), and lawyers are even legally prevented from informing the jurors of their rights. I think you're very right about the source of these problems -- they come from lawyers in so much as almost all of our legislators are lawyers, trained into this profession and having gone through all of this before they create laws. But it's not the trial lawyers or judges who created these issues, and many of them get into the game in order to make things better. But I think to succeed in a system requires acceptance of the system; it changes you. I'll concede that it's likely there are many, many people in the legal profession for whom my analysis isn't particularly accurate and I'm encouraged by your vigorous repudiation of my pessimism (I don't want to be right), but I think there's some truth there to what I'm saying. And I'm not suggesting that there is an easy solution; the problems are emergent, systemic, and very deep.