Doug Henwood <dhenwood@panix.com> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid"> andie nachgeborenen wrote: >As for lawyers, they are no more or less prone to use straw >arguments than anyone else. You just get paid better for it! * * * Some of us do, me for example. Get paid better, that is. I desperately try not to use straw arguments. One reason is, if you don't address the real arguments, you're likely to lose.   > Really, Justin, don't you see that most nonlawyers see lawyers as holding to "a strategic view of the truth" (as a former editor of a celebrity left intellectual once said of said intellectual)? That truth is what you can prove? Yes, of course. But in fact lawyers are not concerned with the truth. They are concerned with what you can prove. If I wrote in a motion, I can't prove X, but it's true, I'd be laughed out of court. And in an adversary system,I cannot (ethically) lie to the court, and say My client didn't do X, if I know otherwise, but even if I know that my client did X, I can still truthfully say, You can't prove my client did X. What else do you want, that I should act like Mr. Toad's barrister in Eric Idle's movie version of The Wind In the Willows: "My client is the most dangerous, reckless, urresponsible driver and car thief. .  . " "Excuse me," says the court, "you _are_ the defense counsel?" "Sorry your honor, I;m doing the best that I can." "Very well, then, carry on."  > Granted there are other professions that do that - advertising and PR, Enron's accountants. No, they actually lie. Good lawyers tell the truth -- about what the proof is, what the law shows. What the facts really are, the jury decides. Obviously reasonable minds can differ on what the proof is and what the law shows, which is why we have an adversary system to present what is supposed to be the best arguments for eacch point of view. > And all of us do that to some degree - teachers, writers, pipefitters, seamstresses, farmers. But it's not quite so prominent a part of the job description. Lying and shading the truth and raising straw arguments is actaully no part of the job description. It is prohibited. If you lie to a judge and get caught, heaven help you. I've seen what happens. If you raise a straw argument and your opponent is any good, you're likely to get nailed.  > A lot of people think there's something unseemly about being so nakedly an opinion for hire. Until they need one, right? > do you think there are all those lawyer jokes? That's part of it. It's complicated. It's also that (1) people off encounter lawyers in conflictual situations, (2) lawyers often don't get them everything they want, (3) many lawyers (like me) make a living selling our talents to the rich and powerful, (4) people see us as a priesthood that deliberately  and unnecessarily complicates stuff that ought to be simple and able to be settled without us. I would add: (5) miost laweyers are not very good. Since what they do is often really important, when they screw up, it makes people mad.  jks</BLOCKQUOTE> <hr size=1>Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/finance/mailsig/*http://tax.yahoo.com">Yahoo! Tax Center</a> - File online, calculators, forms, and more