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What exactly are you proposing here? > I don't know if people have noticed, but lawyers win when people fight People have disagreements. It's inevitable. It s

by hsn915 3y ago

What exactly are you proposing here? > I don't know if people have noticed, but lawyers win when people fight People have disagreements. It's inevitable. It seems like you want people to never disagree on anything. But it's unclear how that can ever be possible. > Judges cannot and should not look down on self-representing litigants Is that not already the case? Is there anything preventing anyone from representing themselves?

somenameforme 3y ago
One idea would be getting back to how the country was founded. It's amazing that some of the most critical legal concepts in our nation are written down in a sentence or two. There is indeed ambiguity that the courts are left to sort out but, in many ways, that's a feature more than a bug. For instance this is the entirety of the 1st Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." If that was written today, it would be 700 pages long and packed with irrelevancies and obfuscation. The goal of those 700 pages was, at some point, to provide clarity, but that's obviously been an abysmal failure. In practice nobody knows exactly what they mean, even including the people signing it into law. And even those who do study those 700 pages will frequently come up with radically different interpretations. So you gain nothing, but make things completely incomprehensible to near 100% of the population. And the same is true of contracts and the like. People are increasingly governed and compelled by language that may as well be Greek. [1] - https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text
throwaway7070 3y ago
Self-represented litigants are treated extremely unfairly compared to represented litigants. I have been involved in three trial court cases where I represented myself ("pro se"). I won about 10% of dozens of motions I wrote and personally signed. Worse, in most of those cases the other side's lawyer was arguing a position obviously contrary to law, won anyway, and forced me to engage in extremely time consuming appeals process to correct the error. Amazingly, I have ghostwritten about a dozen motions for co-parties represented by counsel and their counsel signed it. The success rate of those motions has been 100%. At least with the three judges I have had, it seems like my filings were outright ignored and not read. As soon as a lawyer affixed their signature to my writing, the judge read it and took it seriously enough to apply the law correctly. I know there is a lot of propaganda about self-represented litigants being treated fairly or with kid-gloves, but my personal experience suggests this is false.

by hsn915 3y ago

somenameforme 3y ago

One idea would be getting back to how the country was founded. It's amazing that some of the most critical legal concepts in our nation are written down in a sentence or two. There is indeed ambiguity that the courts are left to sort out but, in many ways, that's a feature more than a bug. For instance this is the entirety of the 1st Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." If that was written today, it would be 700 pages long and packed with irrelevancies and obfuscation. The goal of those 700 pages was, at some point, to provide clarity, but that's obviously been an abysmal failure. In practice nobody knows exactly what they mean, even including the people signing it into law. And even those who do study those 700 pages will frequently come up with radically different interpretations. So you gain nothing, but make things completely incomprehensible to near 100% of the population. And the same is true of contracts and the like. People are increasingly governed and compelled by language that may as well be Greek. [1] - https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text

throwaway7070 3y ago

Self-represented litigants are treated extremely unfairly compared to represented litigants. I have been involved in three trial court cases where I represented myself ("pro se"). I won about 10% of dozens of motions I wrote and personally signed. Worse, in most of those cases the other side's lawyer was arguing a position obviously contrary to law, won anyway, and forced me to engage in extremely time consuming appeals process to correct the error. Amazingly, I have ghostwritten about a dozen motions for co-parties represented by counsel and their counsel signed it. The success rate of those motions has been 100%. At least with the three judges I have had, it seems like my filings were outright ignored and not read. As soon as a lawyer affixed their signature to my writing, the judge read it and took it seriously enough to apply the law correctly. I know there is a lot of propaganda about self-represented litigants being treated fairly or with kid-gloves, but my personal experience suggests this is false.