I don't think there's a way to make the court of law and the court of public opinion align perfectly on every decision. The dichotomy between the court of law a

I don't think there's a way to make the court of law and the court of public opinion align perfectly on every decision. The dichotomy between the court of law and the court of public opinion is inherent to American society- that's how it's supposed to work. Amendments 4-8 more or less codify the notion that one can only be punished for measurable harms, of which one is clearly the culprit (or at least that's how it's supposed to work). "Innocent until proven guilty" and all that stuff. In contrast, the court of public opinion works off of a free-flowing, sometimes contradictory set of widely-held virtues. That means that the court of public opinion can hold people accountable based on virtues that aren't codified into law. That's not always a bad thing; in fact, it's the entire engine of social progress.