[PEN-L:27390] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: most experts agree

["Justin Schwartz" <jkschw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > >
> > >>Do not all lawyers agree that it's their job to make sure the
> guilty get
> > >>punished and the innocent go free?
> > >
> > >No. The job of criminal defense lawyers is to make sure the
> guilty go free.
> > >The job of a civil defense lawyer is to make sure the liable do
> not pay for
> > >their violations. It's an lawyer's ethical duty of zealous
> representation.
> > >
>
> ================
>
> I wonder how many in the legal profession would clig to those
> assertion after reading Arthur Ripstein's latest?

What does Arthur say? But I don't imagine he'd change many minds.

> >
> > It's also the job of plaintiff's lawyers to make sure that the
> defendant
> > pays were or not he's liable. And in my experience many
> prosecutors think
> > that it's their job to send the defendant top jail for as long
> as possible
> > whether or not he's guilty or deserves a long sentence. Not all
> prosectors
> > thus misbehave.
> >
> > jks
>
> ===================
>
> Says who? These sound like self-fulfilling injunctions of a
> self-constituted professional class  in order to secure economic
> advantage by externalizing the possibility and costs of
> inajudicability to me.

OK, no doubt. So, if you are accused of a crime, you want your lawyer to
behave like Mr. Toad's in Wind in thw\e Willows or a lawyer in Stalinist
Russia? "This wretch deserves to pe punished to the full extent of the law!"
"Excuse me, counsel, don't you represent the defendant?" "Your honor, I'm
doing the best that I can." "Very good. Carry on."

Where did the legal community get the
> authority to engage in such activity?  Did the electorates of the
> past 225+ years really delegate such issues to the legal
> profession

Of course not. That's part of why we are hated.

or is there some kind of Platonism that has yet to be
> vanquished?

Back to Wind in the Willows! Maybe you think we should abolish adversary
representation and just let judges investigate what happened and determine
the outcome without the parties having the benefit of informed advocacy.

Or is there going to be a disagreement cascade on
> these issues?

Not among lawyers. But who listens to us? We are just a self-perpetuating
monopoly of self-interested specialists who do no benefit to the public.

jks


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