Groups (Was Re: [lbo-talk] Re: Democracy and Constitutional Rights)

[andie nachgeborenen]

Well, you are right that a lot of people don't understand why lawyers do what they do.  Though judges who will overturn a criminal conviction of a guilty person on grounds of a constitutional violation are increasingly rare. But while it is true that lawyerly ethics are different from regular ethics -- we are supposed to advocate zealously for scumballs, which bothers a lot of people (some lawyers too) -- that doesn't mean that ordinary people can't  legitimately criticize them. Us. And do. And not all the criticism is misguided. Lots of lawyers are creeps and lots of the things we do are creepy. So if some sort of relativism is at issue here, I don't see how this example helps. After all, you approve of judges letting guilty defendants go if their rights have been violated or plaintiffs' lawyers suing sleazy Drs., etc, and how could that be possible if lawywerrs were a walled off subculture immune to praise or blame fromthe outside? jks

Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:

On Sun, 15 Aug 2004, andie nachgeborenen wrote:


> Sure, that's why we go to law school, to share a lawyer subculture that
> the rest of you don't. But (although I think we've already covered
> this), that doesn't mean that the rest of you can't criticize lawyers
> and vice versa -- the moral/cognitive relativism problem doesn't arise
> bewteen lawyers./nonlawyers, right? So we still don't knwo what sort of
> groups, if any, might pose the problem I thoughtw e were discussing
> earlier.

No, actually, it's a good example of my point: say a judge overturns
a felony conviction for a person who is clearly guilty because of
some legal issue (Justin could provide plausible examples better than
I could). Many people in our society would rail against lawyers
and judges and how they just let criminals loose, etc. --Or
consider the goofy attacks against Edwards for being a lawyer;
it's immoral of him to help people sue corporations! He's and
his greedy ilk are the causing the explosion in health care
costs!

So that's a good example of my point: what is considered moral
within the lawyerly subculture is notably different than what is
considered moral by people who are (willfully or not) ignorant
of the subculture.

Miles

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