>are you perchance “a member of the bar”??? - that sounded suspiciously like a lawyer talking.
Actually no... give me a bit more credit than that. I’m a computer programmer; it is natural to my way of thinking to place things on an even playing field... that is, the same inputs to a function SHOULD produce the same outputs; if that should fail then there is nothing that can be done, everything your receive is useless.
The same idea can and should be applied to law. Things like sex, age, political power, monetary assets and the like have no place in the decision of a verdict. If a rich man steals, then he should be called a thief; if a poor man steals then he too should be called a thief.
(Of course that last is a perfect spot to point out mercy, which REQUIRES justice to exist. Many people would not despise a thief stealing food because he was starving, yet everyone despises the frauds and embezzlers that have turned up in the corporate world recently.)
remember however, things in mechanics/mathematics/engineering/physics/chemistry/etc. are generally fixed.
things in my disciplines (political science & public admin) are SELDOM, if ever, fixed as men/women change weekly/daily/hourly/constantly (for that reason, i often think that Political Science is an oxymoron.).
free dixie,sw