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The Assange odyssey may be the Dreyfus Affair of our time. As insane as this reads, the job of litigators is not to make sense, it is to press whatever possibl

The Assange odyssey may be the Dreyfus Affair of our time. As insane as this reads, the job of litigators is not to make sense, it is to press whatever possible advantage they can construe. They are not in the pursuit of truth, that is not what the court establishes. If a litigator is on the receiving end of public outrage for things like the absolutely insane assertions by the prosecution, they take it as credit for doing their job. This professional contempt for truth and principle outside the narrow constraints of legalism is what gives lawyers the reputation for being assholes, and what makes some of them insufferable when their work habits bleed into their personal lives. The trouble in this case that I read from these updates is that the judge is clearly acting like a second prosecutor. I blame it on a generation of people who don't understand impartiality, and who see it as a weakness because they don't need to be impartial if they "know" what they are encountering. Once they have internalized the notion of history as progress, attacks on levers and institutions that can facilitate it are attacks on progress itself. They are litigating ideology, and law is just a host or vehicle. In exposing corruption in the most powerful institutions in the world, to his persecutors Assange's crimes are against progress itself, and I don't think they are capable of impartiality.

toyg 6y ago
Would have upvoted for the parallels to Dreyfus (which are there), but downvoted for some reasoning in the last paragraph that I think are a bit of a stretch. Bad judges have existed in governments of all ages, even when the concept of "history as progress" didn't even exist (or was even the opposite, with the judicial system feeling like the last defense against widespread corruption and decay). It's simply that judges are themselves the expression of the system that selected them, and as such are naturally defensive towards the existing order of things. To get where they are, they have made alliances, accepted compromises, exchanged favors. They built a social capital that they would stand to lose from upsets to the established order. We remember the times when they go against those insticts precisely because they are so few and far between.
- motohagiography 6y ago
  Judges aren't just bureaucrats. Their role is held to a higher standard than petty interest. When they are compromised, they need to leave. The US system has judges elected, where the british and commonwealth system is by appointment, and few would argue that the mentally ill are not well represented in both their ranks, but there is a level of petulance in some of them that indicates risk of a total compromise of the institution.

toyg 6y ago

Would have upvoted for the parallels to Dreyfus (which are there), but downvoted for some reasoning in the last paragraph that I think are a bit of a stretch. Bad judges have existed in governments of all ages, even when the concept of "history as progress" didn't even exist (or was even the opposite, with the judicial system feeling like the last defense against widespread corruption and decay). It's simply that judges are themselves the expression of the system that selected them, and as such are naturally defensive towards the existing order of things. To get where they are, they have made alliances, accepted compromises, exchanged favors. They built a social capital that they would stand to lose from upsets to the established order. We remember the times when they go against those insticts precisely because they are so few and far between.

motohagiography 6y ago
Judges aren't just bureaucrats. Their role is held to a higher standard than petty interest. When they are compromised, they need to leave. The US system has judges elected, where the british and commonwealth system is by appointment, and few would argue that the mentally ill are not well represented in both their ranks, but there is a level of petulance in some of them that indicates risk of a total compromise of the institution.