Posted on 11/02/2004 5:55:33 AM PST by OESY
A most alarming political problem confronting America is the deployment of thousands of lawyers, once again, to litigate the presidential election. No one can think that deciding that contest in courtrooms is healthy for American politics. But as both parties have "lawyered up," the public can only watch helplessly....
Now consider... all controversial cases involve the rejection of strong arguments.... To what kind of mind is... the making of an argument in itself have urgent moral force?
The answer is that it matters to a person trained to spend a lifetime making arguments. Every day in law school, thousands of students are asked to fashion legal arguments on the spot. In theory, the point of this exercise is for subsequent questioning to reveal to students potential weaknesses in their positions. But this so-called Socratic method inevitably teaches a different lesson as well. As students watch each other struggle to avoid intellectual embarrassment or defeat, they learn to admire the capacity to argue for its own sake. In recent years this implicit lesson has become more powerful because standards of political correctness and the right of students to evaluate their teachers make it difficult for professors to ask the kinds of follow-up questions that might lead to real insight and growth. As a result, the tendency to invest argumentation with moral status increasingly lacks humility or self-doubt.
...Unfortunately, this education breeds and dignifies some dangerous inclinations. It encourages people to favor constructed idealizations over real life. And it confuses the skills of argumentation with morality. The legions of lawyers encamped across the country to litigate their way to political victory are the embodiment of a more insidious process -- the penetration of our society by a relentlessly adversarial mindset, one that is entirely ready to make our democracy unworkable.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I really and truly believe that lawyers are a cancer upon any society.
The title of this article is unfair to all the good, honest lawyers in America, both of them.
John Edwards must think this is a proud day for Lawyers.
Au contraire. They might not manufacture or produce tangible products, but they provide a service. Would you say accountants prodcuce nothing? Lawyers are a part of a system that maintains law and order, that settles disputes peacefully.
But wait! You must know that. Is it the hair, and the suits, and the babes, and the "style", and the jakes, and the TV, and LA Law, and The Practice, etc?
No. My inspiration was Law and Order, because I want to pursue justice. Thinking about criminal prosecution. Tell me that isn't a valuable contribution to society.
Because it took a lot of work and a lot of sacrifices to get to this point. I didn't have the easiest time with my undergraduate degree (chemistry).
One problem of the legal profession is that too many lawyers are proud of what they do. They seem to think that their cleverness in argumentation (what used to be called "sophistry") and their knowledge of the minutiae of the law makes them superior to people who actually do something useful.
That's not at all what I meant. What I mean is that its a noble profession that can do a lot of good; and I am not embarassed to say that I am working to become a lawyer.
Amen, I agree 100%. I remember reading back in the 60s, where the roots of many of today's problems can be found, that "idealistic" young people were entering law school so they could "change the world" and "effect social change." These libbie shyster are now running our country into the ground.
Well said. You make my point.
It is true that we need these services. Because of the ongoing deconstruction of "law by reason", or law by Judeo-Christian Ethic, referred to and updated minute by minute and freshly labeled "Legality", your services ARE in ever increasing demand. And, as I said earlier, you refine your loophole "certainty", and thus you create the need for others of your new legal specialty.
Corporations hire teams of attorneys, not only to protect themselves from breaking the law, but as often to find loopholes to exploit the law itself. Every new ruling creates a new need. I see the cancer. Where is the PRODUCTION?
Yes you provide a service. And the end product of that service is packaged and delivered in lily white toilet paper, excuse me, "Legal" sheets.
My personal observation of who you are, upon reading your smug, flip, "brighter-minds-than-your-own" answers, is one who is an enabler of our hugely dysfunctional tort sytem. I'm sure you have more Mercedes' than I do, and gold Rolexs, but being rich does not make you right. Nor does it make you a philosopher. Better you stick to something that has no edges...
That quaint, outdated idea of Right and Wrong is so "lame", I mean, "Everything GOOD for someone is BAD for someone else, right? What's truth got to do with it, anyway? "Everyone is equally entitled to the best defense he can buy right? Ain't that moral?" Your just picking the side that pays the best... EITHER side is entitled to the best judgment they can buy. Your just the facilitator, the mediator, the compromiser, the peacemaker." I mean, THERE YOU ARE, speakerphone on, framed by the 'de rigeur' impreissive, oversized library wall of hundreds of almost new, sequenced "Judicial Reviews" and legal tomes, upright and natty behind your berylwood desk, ready to serve! Okay team, as you know, its all about "BILLABLE HOURS, start the clock..."
I gotcha.
I must confess I sought a moderate position, having rejected as too controversial the extremist, William Shakespeare, who wrote:
"First thing we do is kill all the lawyers." -- one of the followers of the rebel Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part II.
Well, it's similarly the case on faculties at many insitutions of higher ed, not just law schools.
Have a look at your state university's faculty pages. Many of them took their PhDs in the late 60s, conceivably to take a draft deferment. So many people went into the humanities at that time, they closed the door to 2 generations of people who were interested in teaching. There just wasn't enough space for aspiring college teachers through the 80s and 90s.
It's slowly changing though, as they die or retire.
In what other area of society could they be better employed?
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