7 ms·

It's silly to equate a legal defense with a belief though. I may not have the belief, personally, that spontaneous crimes of passion deserve a light sentence,

• rootusrootus 8y ago
  Assertions of certain politicians to the contrary, corporations are not people, and Google wasn't defending against a crime of passion.
  • koboll 8y ago
    Sure, I wrote a contrived example. But the onus, I think, is on the critics in this thread to provide the theory of legal ethics under which attorneys should refrain from advancing the most effective defense of their clients if doing so might cause public relations concerns. It's my understanding that zealously defending their clients within the bounds of the law is among an attorney's highest obligations.
    • rootusrootus 8y ago
      In my view, the lawyer is absolutely obligated to present all viable (in their view) legal options to their client. But the buck stops with the client -- they decide which legal arguments to make.
    • pdpi 8y ago
      To use an equally contrived example of my own — there's plenty of jurisdictions where arguing something along the lines of "look at how she was dressed, she was asking for it" will get you off the hook on rape charges. Would you still argue that an attorney who makes that argument is merely "advancing the most effective defense of their clients"? Or would you find that conduct reprehensible both for the attorney, and the client who allowed the attorney to use that line of reasoning? Ultimately, it's your own choice what lines of arguing you present, and you don't get an ethical freebie just because it's "effective".
      • Rylinks 8y ago
        there's plenty of people who think defending a criminal at all is ethically dubious. Depriving criminal defendants of the most effective defense by applying social pressure to their attorneys is not a good road to walk down.
      • AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        > To use an equally contrived example of my own — there's plenty of jurisdictions where arguing something along the lines of "look at how she was dressed, she was asking for it" will get you off the hook on rape charges. Rape is an unusually problematic situation because consensual sex and unconsensual sex produce a lot of the same physical evidence, and it's possible for someone to consent but after the fact have regrets or experience social pressure. That leaves you having to evaluate evidence of whether or not there was consent. If you're a falsely accused defendant trying to rebut a claim that she didn't consent, what evidence of that do you propose to use? Also notice that look at how she was dressed is a particularly ineffective "get out of jail free card" when the accuser was a nun dressed in her habit. The implications of that, i.e. that you're more credible if you dress conservatively and don't attend frat parties, are very politically inconvenient. But a black man has a constitutional right to carry a handgun, which also makes it more likely that he'll be shot by the police who will use it as a defense. It would be better if these trade offs didn't exist, but how do you propose to make them not?
        • stale2002 8y ago
          It is not about "making a proposal to make sure these tradoffs don't exist". Instead it is about morally judging someone for making a morally reprehensible argument. If there is some country in the world where black people don't have equal rights, and a company uses this as a legal defense for it's behavior, then I am going to judge the company as being full of horrible horrible human beings. One does not get a free pass for your behavior, just because it is legal. Onr instead should get judged for the horrible person that one is.
          • AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  • yourbandsucks 8y ago
    The legal system treats them as entities very similar to people. It's not a statement of principle, it's a statement of process.
• pdpi 8y ago
  Had they argued that the Obama-era rules didn't apply to this case for some reason, I would've agreed with you. But the argument is that those rules should be overruled. That is precisely arguing that your preferred outcome for this case should be "extrapolated to wider society", as you put it.
  • koboll 8y ago
    If those two arguments would have been equally effective, then perhaps you would be right. I would bet that that wasn't the case, and that's why Google's attorneys advanced the argument they did. Perhaps you are right but they advanced both arguments to be safe, as a higher parent comment suggested. But it's hard to tell, because the article is vague on these points. It refers to their actual argument only as "urged the National Labor Relations Board to undo that precedent". What exactly does that mean? It's written as if they submitted a policy brief, but it sounds more like they were arguing a prior decision by the NLRB was incorrectly decided, based on previous precedent. Which is something attorneys do all the time and much less dramatic, sans the lobbying-esque framing here.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
• topspin 8y ago
  > It's silly to equate a legal defense with a belief though. It's actually silly not to. As was said; when there is something at stake their story is something other than what they offer while placating outrage. I can't fathom rationally choosing to believe meaningless pillow talk over the black and white filings of Google's representation in a court.