Posted on 05/27/2010 5:28:49 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
[I think if the gop wins big in november he may resign.]
You’re funny. He will lie, cheat, and steal to maintain his power. He will NEVER resign.
Can’t you let me dream for a minute? LOL.
you are probably right, but he will become even more dangerous if the GOP wins big, sort of like a corned rabid dog.
Peg, we saw signs of this during the campaign. Welcome to the party, darlin’.
Ph. D., mathematics.
No comparison. None.
To an extent law is still a trade, but navigating law school requires good cold memorization skills and the ability to make connections between apparently unrelated groups of facts and theories. Plus of course you have to be a good persuasive writer. And be able to synthesize a bunch of memorized case law into some kind of presentable legal theory in 3 hours or less.
Just looking at Obama and listening to him talk tells me that he never did as well in law school as everybody says he did. He lacks the "think on your feet" skills that let you write a good exam in three hours when you can't really remember all the facts of Pennoyer v. Neff.
Practicing law is thankfully a lot easier than law school (and it certainly is easier still since LEXIS and WestLaw came in). But that brings in a whole new group of skills that you don't learn in law school -- 'reading' a jury panel, cross-examining a witness, writing a persuasive appellate brief. The really good guys are born with those skills, but they can be learned by experience. And again, it's obvious from listening to Obama that he never really did this work. Lawyers are like sharks when it comes to sensing an inexperienced tyro thrashing around in water out of his depth.
this man is one sick puppy.”
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You should find a sick puppy and apologize to him.
You confuse specialization for intellect. I cannot repair my toilet, but I could if I took the time to learn.
good cold memorization skills
Ah, a hard drive. As opposed to the CPU. We don't ask the hard drive to do the thinking, do we?
Plus of course you have to be a good persuasive writer.
Subjective. Not to mention, anti-intellectual. You are saying that your skill is to use language to obscure the weakness of your arguments.
Just looking at Obama and listening to him talk tells me that he never did as well in law school as everybody says he did.
Doesn't matter. He graduated. BTW, what is the failure rate in law school? 3%? 5%?
He lacks the "think on your feet" skills that let you write a good exam in three hours when you can't really remember all the facts of Pennoyer v. Neff.
Oh, I don't know, he BSs quite well.
(and it certainly is easier still since LEXIS and WestLaw came in).
Being a human hard drive isn't all that necessary.
'reading' a jury panel, cross-examining a witness, writing a persuasive appellate brief.
Not really intellect. Actually, these are the same skills one might expect from a con artist.
Come to think of it...
Lawyers are like sharks when it comes to sensing an inexperienced tyro thrashing around in water out of his depth.
Funny, they didn't do much about him in 2008. Nobody listened to the mathematician on FR who kept talking about the wussiness of law school. Now we know.
But let's not get too far afield. Consider the following experiment: Take the class at Harvard Law and swap them for the graduate students in math at, say, UMass who speak English as their first language (there must be at least one!). Let the Law students get a master's degree in math (a 2 year process) and let the math students get a law degree (because of the corruption inherent in the legal profession, that's a 3 year process).
Let's see what percentage of the students finish the others' curriculum on time. All I know is that Reese Witherspoon wouldn't have finished Real Analysis I.
I’d have a lot more sympathy for lawyers if they didn’t deign to rule over us.
For example, I’d like to be a Supreme Court justice. I have a triple-digit IQ (so I might be overqualified) and I can read and write in English.
But I can’t, can I? Because lawyers demand to rule over one-third of our government. The least accountable one-third and, recently, the most powerful.
And this doesn’t even begin to count the lawyers in the other branches.
I agree with Scalia in that our society is suffering a major problem in the fact that we have so many lawyers, rather than people in productive professions.
We do have the occasional pro se litigant -- often a very bright person from another field -- who thinks he can 'do it himself'. He can't. With the best will in the world (and the law bends over backwards for pro se litigants) a judge often cannot save his case for him.
I agree that we have too many lawyers. But the real underlying problem is the lax statutory scheme, particularly in tort law. As long as there is easy money to be made by exploiting unreformed tort law, the profession will attract the less than upright. We weed them out as fast as we can.
We have too few lawyers in the Georgia General Assembly, however (there are only 31 of them now). The non-lawyers (some of whom think law is no big deal and doesn't require much intelligence) write laws that make no sense or have horrid unintended consequences. Like a couple of teenage lovebirds looking at prison for 20-50 for aggravated child molestation . . . .
Actually, it seems to me that lawyers have a vested interest in ill-considered and poorly-written law.
We don’t need lawyers in the legislature, we need them working for the legislature. I don’t mind if lawyers know their place, like any other group of experts.
Again, regarding the pro se litigant, you are confusing expertise with intellect. I’m not saying that the legal profession has not produced voluminous information requiring expert knowledge, but remember the issue at hand here. I contend that success in law school is no indicator of intelligence.
Moreover, I would contend that, since people who have difficulty with mathematics will disproportionately tend towards the law, it is a slight negative indicator.
It’s not intellect that leads a lawyer to see the holes in a poorly-written law, it’s experience. You say that unreformed tort law is the fault of the lack of lawyers, but I say that the legal profession is a protection racket that has very little interest in reigning in its errant members.
You assert that there are too few lawyers in the Georgia legislature, but if I were to argue the entirely rational position that we need a single payer system for all legal care, how do you think that would go over? I’m thinking it wouldn’t make it out of committee.
But the idea that law is a 'protection racket' is just the sort of idea that a person of 'superior intellect' will get into his head and just can't seem to get out. Usually founded on inflammatory news articles and a general dislike of lawyers rather than facts.
You're welcome to your opinion, I suppose, but even a towering intellect has to have some facts to work on.
Regarding a protection racket, I do know that in court there are at least three lawyers. One on one side, one on the other and one presiding over it all. Pretty good scam. "Everybody hates lawyers until they need one." Sounds pretty racketeeringish to me.
We really need civilian oversight of the legal profession.
Single payer system's not rational. I'll trust my doctor on that one, but lawyers don't like it either. Unless they're socialists. Thankfully very few practicing lawyers are socialists
I dunno, a lot of the ones in the legislatures are. Keep in mind that lawyers are the only profession that have a Constitutional right to a salary. So we need to keep the profession under control because it is given a privileged position.
Besides, if we need more lawyers, why don't we do what we do with scientists and engineers -- import them? Time to get the the proportion of foreign born law students up to about 50% or so.
I don’t mind arguing with somebody who’s actually got some facts on hand (had a long and very interesting one the other day about jury nullification) but arguing with somebody who has no facts and no knowledge, only an unreasoning dislike of lawyers, is boring.
OK, here you go: Stanford Law school has 1.5% of its student body foreign born. http://www.law.stanford.edu/school/facts/#degrees_and_admissions
For engineering, the percentage of foreign born undergraduates is 11.5%. For graduate students, it's 40.8%. http://soe.stanford.edu/about/facts.html
Forty point eight percent.
There is no competition in law school. Engineers are competing against students from the best around the world who received highly-subsidized educations (no part-time jobs for them).
But I guess I'm the one who has to come up with all of the information. It's easy to engage in refutation by non-engagement.
One more thing: Top three countries in lawyers per capita:
US: 265
Brazil: 326
New Zealand: 391
Not even close.
There are several reasons other than relative intelligence for law schools not attracting foreign students, and they should be obvious.
1. Our legal system is unique, both on a state level and on a federal level. The English system is closest, but there are major, major differences. Nobody comes to this country to study law and then go home (or at least nobody will believe it when they say so). Not so engineering or science students. What's more, it's a bit problematic to study law in a state where you're not going to practice, because each state has its own unique body of law.
2. You have to have perfect command of the English language to study law in this country. Not so to study engineering or science. The stories about TAs who can barely speak English are rife. My daughter just graduated with a B.S. in Biology and she has first hand experience. In fact, she's been invited to get her master's and work as a TA - perhaps in part because they want more females in the job, but also because so many of the TAs have a . . . less than perfect . . . grasp of English.
I repeat . . . we can have this discussion without all the nastiness. Drop the ad hominem and try to find some actual, relevant facts.
Peggy Noonan is like Arlen Specter. She hops back and forth depending on who will be her next boss.
Ah, proof by anecdote.
Our legal system is unique, both on a state level and on a federal level.
Are you really under the impression that people who go to graduate school in engineering and science actually return to their home country?
Check out the faculty lists sometime and see where they got their undergraduate degrees (among schools that give such info on the website), especially for faculty who got their Ph.D. after, say, 1985. I am quite sure that many immigrants would be happy to go to law school here and stick around as lawyers. We just have to change the visa system so that it is as easy for them to do this as to get a job at a University or in the private sector in science and engineering. I think we need a new visa class for lawyers. If we have too few lawyers, we should do what we do in other fields, import them.
There is really a fundamental social problem with the profession of lawyer being one that leads to success and power -- financial or otherwise. Scalia has pointed this out.
The English system is closest, but there are major, major differences.
Indeed there are. No John Edwardses there.
Also, none of the party leaders in the UK are lawyers.
What's more, it's a bit problematic to study law in a state where you're not going to practice, because each state has its own unique body of law.
So, basically, what you are saying is what I am saying. There is very little competition in law school and the assertion that law school graduates are "smart" is a fallacy that results in an insular group convincing themselves that their proximity to political power indicates their having passed through some sort of intellectual sieve. And it's simply not true.
You have to have perfect command of the English language to study law in this country.
Yes. Exactly. No competition from overseas. Why is this so difficult? Your profession pulls from a smaller pool.
My daughter just graduated with a B.S. in Biology and she has first hand experience. In fact, she's been invited to get her master's and work as a TA - perhaps in part because they want more females in the job, but also because so many of the TAs have a . . . less than perfect . . . grasp of English.
Well, the whole "more females" thing is imposed by...wait for it...lawyers and others with wussmanities degrees. There isn't any corresponding handwringing over the fact that the overall percentage of women in college and university is approaching 60. By the way, I don't see where biology has a dearth of women -- it has not been my experience at all.
I repeat . . . we can have this discussion without all the nastiness. Drop the ad hominem and try to find some actual, relevant facts.
My mastery of the English language may not be perfect, but I am not the one engaging in ad hominem. (OK, fine, Latin, but still...) I have made no effort to refer to you directly or to imply anything about you personally. If you take offense to the warts of your profession being exposed, you can make an effort not to take it personally. There are plenty of very valuable lawyers who do good yeoman's work as many professionals do. But they aren't the problem.
You've been ragging the entire profession, no exceptions noted, for days.
I've got better things to do than talk past somebody whose mind is made up. You go on believing what you want to, and I'll just go on practicing law and working to improve the legal system. But I'm not going to hang around to listen to your fact-free bad-mouthing any longer.
Too little, too late from both Obama & Noonan. She was, after all, fool enough to believe his was “supposed to be competent.”
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