I actually don't think it's hard to argue that every defense lawyer serves the public interest. The public interest is served first and foremost by the principle of innocent until proven guilty. That heinous defendant whom the court of public opinion finds guilty may, in fact, be innocent. Sadly, superb lawyering isn't available to all ,but in a perfect world, it would be.
I read the same NYT article about Wet Leg and felt ancient since the “butter my biscuit” reference was as unfamiliar as their music. I am generations behind in the popular culture category. You nudged me to watch their video, and it tickled me and added an ear worm to my day. I did not expect prairie dresses. I followed up with the Wet Dream video and am still smiling at giant lobster hands playing guitar. I’m momentarily hip. I had a 7 minute detour from the dire news of the day. Worth the subscription! Thanks.
I agree that using "excess" funds to beef up security on the CTA is a true economic driver for he City and region.
I thought Lori Lightfoot would be a much more effective Mayor than she has been. As a "political outsider" she's had a tough row to hoe, and I think that she has been ill-served by the CPD. As a fellow Wolverine (she graduated the same year I did - 1984 - but I don't remember ever running across her in Ann Arbor - big school and all that), I was rooting for her to succeed. I think that she should NOT run for re-election, but I am completely at a loss as to who might replace her.
I note that this year, Tiger Woods is 46 - the same age as "ancient" Jack Nicklaus was when he won his last Masters (and last Major Tournament). I remember taking time out of studying for law school finals during my 2nd year to root for Jack to win in the April of '86.)
“And to cast aspersions on the lawyer who takes on that difficult and potentially unpleasant task is to harm all defendants going forward by making it harder for them to hire a defense.” -- Zorn
It seems to me that just because it may be true for one defendant doesn’t make it true for all of them “going forward” -- if one apple is bad it doesn’t mean that the whole bushel is bad.
Casting aspersions on Cruz’s lawyer may make it hard on Cruz’s defense, but it doesn’t “harm all defendants going forward . . .."
I don't think suspending the grocery tax (1%) will help those in need much. It's the price of groceries that's excessive (inflation at 8% currently). But I do agree with those saying the 1% grocery tax should be repealed, permanently. Illinois is one of only 13 states to tax groceries. Tax holidays are are political stunts that usually expire after the next election, not really helpful to their targeted audience.
On the matter of judging attorneys by their clients, I represent plaintiffs in civil rights and employment discrimination cases. Whenever I meet a colleague who works in those areas of law who has, at some point in the past, switched from representing plaintiffs to defendants, I ask them when it was that they went over to the dark side, alluding to Yoda’s admonition to Luke Skywalker to “beware the dark side” because “seductive it is.” I am, of course, joking when I ask them that, but only sort of. It’s so difficult for plaintiffs to win employment discrimination cases and civil rights cases as things currently stand that it seems to me that the entities with all the money, HR professionals, and resources don’t need more help. Large employers and government entities don’t need more help. It’s the little people they run roughshod over who need legal services.
I wouldn't judge a lawyer by their clients, but I would judge an activist by their activism. If someone is an activist for Men's Rights, and, being a lawyer, takes on mainly cases defending men against abuse charges, etc. I would judge that person as a harmful zealot. Same thing for activist/lawyers seeking out and defending Antifa rioters.
But for a non-activist lawyer who takes on high-profile, big-money cases because they are good business, I don't judge them based on what the client did. The idea that a lawyer should look at all the possible defendants available and avoid the guilty or despicable ones in childish. That's like the people who criticize writers because, of all the important things in the world they could write about, they chose to write about something minor that I don't agree with. Some people judge writers for that, but those people don't understand what being a writer is.
The anti-bad-client side of the argument relies on two ways of thinking that run powerfully counter to our moral intuitions:
1. "Granted, someone has to do it, but why does it have to be you?" That's a terrible argument! Kant made something like the commonsensical suggestion that you should act in accordance with only those principles you would have everyone else follow. You can't insist on a "don't defend bad buys" principle while at the same time conceding that someone has to defend bad guys.
2. "You're doing more harm than good in the world." That may be true in the specific case, but that is not the only way we decide what's right and wrong. If we judged every action by whether it produced more harm or good in the world, we may well think that not only should lawyers not defend bad guys but that doctors should not treat bad guys either. Indeed, we might think it would be morally worth it to kill an innocent person to harvest their organs so that five others might live. Of course, we don't think this way. Our utilitarian intuitions are mixed with principled ones.
The principle at issue here is that every defendant is entitled to advocacy in an adversarial process where the other side is the government trying to put you away. Every defense attorney is upholding the system and defending our liberties by keeping the state honest in every case, even when it's unpopular and there's pressure to ignore the niceties of little things like proof by competent evidence. We might think that Weinstein is the poster child for the don't-defend-bad-guys rule, but a defense-inclined person might think just the opposite -- that the case against such a high profile, reviled figure requires more, not less, scrutiny. After all, the MeToo movement did see pressure to ignore or set aside or adjust the usual standards of proof, even in official campus proceedings.
The main problem with the public defender solution -- "Just let them make do with the public defender" -- is that it implicitly suggests that a defense by a public defender will generally be inferior. If that's true, it amounts to the principle, "Alleged bad guys are only entitled to representation of inferior quality." That doesn't sound like a very sound principle to me, and I'm not sure anyone would defend it outright. Public defenders are heroic people, but they are overworked and lack resources--precisely because, by the way, we tend not to care about the quality of criminal defense representation. Indeed, one could argue that the real social problem isn't that bad guys get good lawyers too much of the time, but they don't get them nearly enough of the time. I agree that it's a scandal that a celebrity or wealthy client can seem to buy their freedom where an ordinary person would get prison. The solution is not a rule against defending bad guys. There are many possible solutions: We could move toward a more inquisitorial process in which judges take the lead, rendering lawyers less important. And/or we could socialize criminal defense, essentially turning all criminal defense attorneys into public defenders. And/or we could simply better fund public defender offices.
I read Eric's lawyer comments in from three perspectives. 1) What is fair game in politics? 2) What is a reasonable ethical judgement of people in the legal profession? and 3) How should the general public feel about the two? On the first, it seems to be settled that anything is fair game for attack against anyone that has entered the political arena. A politician will always have to defend their prior actions and decisions and expect a public judgement of them. Similarly, the public must be ready to assess the legitimacy and sincerity of the attack. I would suggest a particularly jaundiced eye on any attack ad or congressional hearing. On the second, I think that in any profession, a person needs to think about the ethical implications of their actions, and that others in their profession may judge them. But any that would claim a moral high ground, had best be consistent in damning all of the ethical failings of their profession. On this point the general public already has a low opinion of lawyers and they are the common but of jokes. But anyone that ever needs one wants the best and most zealous that they can get.
I am glad to see Ray Lopez in the race. Mainly because he is the only alderman with the courage to consistently call out the gangs as the source of the city violence problems.
Attorneys. My initial response - which hasn’t change - is no. Everyone should be represented. Who is to say before conviction of the person is guilty or not. The judge or jury should hear what both sides have to say so that they can determine who has made the best argument. It’s not perfect but provides a good legal system. That said I did picture OJ Simpsons lawyers. Media glory hounds taking high profile cases for their own ego. Treating the courts as their stage.
My problem wit Richard Irvin is that he says "All lives matter" in his commercial and that means that he cannot say "Black lives matter", for whatever reason, more likely than not to appease white Republicans who hate the Black Lives Matter movement. He also states "Defend police".
Both of these indicate that he doesn't accept the fact that there are problems with police and that those problems should be fixed and I am tired of this pandering to law enforcement because I and a friend were attacked by an off-duty cop who filed a false police report and had his girlfriend do the same. Charges were dropped after an internal investigation but he kept his job and the DA had absolutely no interest in hearing about lying cops, cops that he uses in trying suspects. This cop was willing to send us to jail for something that we didn't do and so was the DA. We had witnesses as to what really happened, but that doesn't change the fact that those in the system were unethical.
No one should support the likes of Irvin, not for his work as a defense attorney, but for his absolute disregard for the problems that exist in police departments and in the DA's office. "Tough on crime" sells with conservatives because their nature is to support authority, but it doesn't make a justice system, it creates a game in which cops and DAs write their own rules and that includes lying throughout the process without fear of being held accountable. We need good people in power who will fix problems, not ignore them to pander to their base.
Re: Unions and John Kass. In 1965, at the age of 25, I landed a dream job at a company that had union contracts. I am the son of a Republican lawyer. Like him I am a college graduate, and wore a suit to work. I could not see myself as a union member. My job overlapped the work of three craft unions. Those unions frequently complained about my transgressions and fined my employer. After two years I was forced to join a union. I reluctantly accepted the one third raise in salary, and the best health insurance I ever had until Medicare. Looking back it would have been immoral to opt out of dues or fees had that been possible in 1967. The union had many faults, but on balance it was the only way for members to get fair treatment from employers. Years later I became an employer myself and fought with those same unions over ridiculous rules and contributions to health insurance. Now, about John Kass. I am an old fashioned Liberal. He is the latest kind of conservative. There is nothing conservative about it. I looked upon his writing as a pox on the face of the Tribune. It was not just what he wrote about that I disagreed with, it was his vocabulary and the way he used it. The kindest way to describe the tenor of his Tribune columns was ugly. As in the Soros column, he regularly crossed the line. You know him as a person. It is very possible he is very different in person. The reader only has his text to get to know him. The John Kass I know from his column would bump the person in front of him with his shopping cart quite purposefully, just to get a reaction. Then he would apologize insincerely. You tell us that Kass is not antisemitic so I will accept that. But I can’t accept that he does not know the totality of what it means to invoke the name of George Soros. It is a dog whistle. Even before Trump, conservatives have raised the use of dog whistles to a level never seen in history. I believe in the first amendment, and John Kass has a right to his opinion, but from time to time I had to wonder if publishing that opinion was wasn’t just plain wrong.
On the murder rate, you can’t say it but…the correlation between Trump and Biden states has more to do with racial demographics than political ones. The black murder rate is 6 times that of whites, and 12 times as many robberies are black-on-white than vice versa. But saying this, I suppose, makes me a racist.
@Eric Zorn. I am glad you brought up people who get exonerated after being in jail. How many of those people would have been too unsavory to have been defended at their initial trials by lawyers who think it is beneath them?
I actually don't think it's hard to argue that every defense lawyer serves the public interest. The public interest is served first and foremost by the principle of innocent until proven guilty. That heinous defendant whom the court of public opinion finds guilty may, in fact, be innocent. Sadly, superb lawyering isn't available to all ,but in a perfect world, it would be.
I read the same NYT article about Wet Leg and felt ancient since the “butter my biscuit” reference was as unfamiliar as their music. I am generations behind in the popular culture category. You nudged me to watch their video, and it tickled me and added an ear worm to my day. I did not expect prairie dresses. I followed up with the Wet Dream video and am still smiling at giant lobster hands playing guitar. I’m momentarily hip. I had a 7 minute detour from the dire news of the day. Worth the subscription! Thanks.
I agree that using "excess" funds to beef up security on the CTA is a true economic driver for he City and region.
I thought Lori Lightfoot would be a much more effective Mayor than she has been. As a "political outsider" she's had a tough row to hoe, and I think that she has been ill-served by the CPD. As a fellow Wolverine (she graduated the same year I did - 1984 - but I don't remember ever running across her in Ann Arbor - big school and all that), I was rooting for her to succeed. I think that she should NOT run for re-election, but I am completely at a loss as to who might replace her.
I note that this year, Tiger Woods is 46 - the same age as "ancient" Jack Nicklaus was when he won his last Masters (and last Major Tournament). I remember taking time out of studying for law school finals during my 2nd year to root for Jack to win in the April of '86.)
Nikolas Cruz’s defense:
“And to cast aspersions on the lawyer who takes on that difficult and potentially unpleasant task is to harm all defendants going forward by making it harder for them to hire a defense.” -- Zorn
It seems to me that just because it may be true for one defendant doesn’t make it true for all of them “going forward” -- if one apple is bad it doesn’t mean that the whole bushel is bad.
Casting aspersions on Cruz’s lawyer may make it hard on Cruz’s defense, but it doesn’t “harm all defendants going forward . . .."
I don't think suspending the grocery tax (1%) will help those in need much. It's the price of groceries that's excessive (inflation at 8% currently). But I do agree with those saying the 1% grocery tax should be repealed, permanently. Illinois is one of only 13 states to tax groceries. Tax holidays are are political stunts that usually expire after the next election, not really helpful to their targeted audience.
On the matter of judging attorneys by their clients, I represent plaintiffs in civil rights and employment discrimination cases. Whenever I meet a colleague who works in those areas of law who has, at some point in the past, switched from representing plaintiffs to defendants, I ask them when it was that they went over to the dark side, alluding to Yoda’s admonition to Luke Skywalker to “beware the dark side” because “seductive it is.” I am, of course, joking when I ask them that, but only sort of. It’s so difficult for plaintiffs to win employment discrimination cases and civil rights cases as things currently stand that it seems to me that the entities with all the money, HR professionals, and resources don’t need more help. Large employers and government entities don’t need more help. It’s the little people they run roughshod over who need legal services.
I wouldn't judge a lawyer by their clients, but I would judge an activist by their activism. If someone is an activist for Men's Rights, and, being a lawyer, takes on mainly cases defending men against abuse charges, etc. I would judge that person as a harmful zealot. Same thing for activist/lawyers seeking out and defending Antifa rioters.
But for a non-activist lawyer who takes on high-profile, big-money cases because they are good business, I don't judge them based on what the client did. The idea that a lawyer should look at all the possible defendants available and avoid the guilty or despicable ones in childish. That's like the people who criticize writers because, of all the important things in the world they could write about, they chose to write about something minor that I don't agree with. Some people judge writers for that, but those people don't understand what being a writer is.
The anti-bad-client side of the argument relies on two ways of thinking that run powerfully counter to our moral intuitions:
1. "Granted, someone has to do it, but why does it have to be you?" That's a terrible argument! Kant made something like the commonsensical suggestion that you should act in accordance with only those principles you would have everyone else follow. You can't insist on a "don't defend bad buys" principle while at the same time conceding that someone has to defend bad guys.
2. "You're doing more harm than good in the world." That may be true in the specific case, but that is not the only way we decide what's right and wrong. If we judged every action by whether it produced more harm or good in the world, we may well think that not only should lawyers not defend bad guys but that doctors should not treat bad guys either. Indeed, we might think it would be morally worth it to kill an innocent person to harvest their organs so that five others might live. Of course, we don't think this way. Our utilitarian intuitions are mixed with principled ones.
The principle at issue here is that every defendant is entitled to advocacy in an adversarial process where the other side is the government trying to put you away. Every defense attorney is upholding the system and defending our liberties by keeping the state honest in every case, even when it's unpopular and there's pressure to ignore the niceties of little things like proof by competent evidence. We might think that Weinstein is the poster child for the don't-defend-bad-guys rule, but a defense-inclined person might think just the opposite -- that the case against such a high profile, reviled figure requires more, not less, scrutiny. After all, the MeToo movement did see pressure to ignore or set aside or adjust the usual standards of proof, even in official campus proceedings.
The main problem with the public defender solution -- "Just let them make do with the public defender" -- is that it implicitly suggests that a defense by a public defender will generally be inferior. If that's true, it amounts to the principle, "Alleged bad guys are only entitled to representation of inferior quality." That doesn't sound like a very sound principle to me, and I'm not sure anyone would defend it outright. Public defenders are heroic people, but they are overworked and lack resources--precisely because, by the way, we tend not to care about the quality of criminal defense representation. Indeed, one could argue that the real social problem isn't that bad guys get good lawyers too much of the time, but they don't get them nearly enough of the time. I agree that it's a scandal that a celebrity or wealthy client can seem to buy their freedom where an ordinary person would get prison. The solution is not a rule against defending bad guys. There are many possible solutions: We could move toward a more inquisitorial process in which judges take the lead, rendering lawyers less important. And/or we could socialize criminal defense, essentially turning all criminal defense attorneys into public defenders. And/or we could simply better fund public defender offices.
I read Eric's lawyer comments in from three perspectives. 1) What is fair game in politics? 2) What is a reasonable ethical judgement of people in the legal profession? and 3) How should the general public feel about the two? On the first, it seems to be settled that anything is fair game for attack against anyone that has entered the political arena. A politician will always have to defend their prior actions and decisions and expect a public judgement of them. Similarly, the public must be ready to assess the legitimacy and sincerity of the attack. I would suggest a particularly jaundiced eye on any attack ad or congressional hearing. On the second, I think that in any profession, a person needs to think about the ethical implications of their actions, and that others in their profession may judge them. But any that would claim a moral high ground, had best be consistent in damning all of the ethical failings of their profession. On this point the general public already has a low opinion of lawyers and they are the common but of jokes. But anyone that ever needs one wants the best and most zealous that they can get.
Totally agree with the political Santa comments. It almost seems like a competition to find new freebies to handout in an election year.
I am glad to see Ray Lopez in the race. Mainly because he is the only alderman with the courage to consistently call out the gangs as the source of the city violence problems.
Attorneys. My initial response - which hasn’t change - is no. Everyone should be represented. Who is to say before conviction of the person is guilty or not. The judge or jury should hear what both sides have to say so that they can determine who has made the best argument. It’s not perfect but provides a good legal system. That said I did picture OJ Simpsons lawyers. Media glory hounds taking high profile cases for their own ego. Treating the courts as their stage.
My problem wit Richard Irvin is that he says "All lives matter" in his commercial and that means that he cannot say "Black lives matter", for whatever reason, more likely than not to appease white Republicans who hate the Black Lives Matter movement. He also states "Defend police".
Both of these indicate that he doesn't accept the fact that there are problems with police and that those problems should be fixed and I am tired of this pandering to law enforcement because I and a friend were attacked by an off-duty cop who filed a false police report and had his girlfriend do the same. Charges were dropped after an internal investigation but he kept his job and the DA had absolutely no interest in hearing about lying cops, cops that he uses in trying suspects. This cop was willing to send us to jail for something that we didn't do and so was the DA. We had witnesses as to what really happened, but that doesn't change the fact that those in the system were unethical.
No one should support the likes of Irvin, not for his work as a defense attorney, but for his absolute disregard for the problems that exist in police departments and in the DA's office. "Tough on crime" sells with conservatives because their nature is to support authority, but it doesn't make a justice system, it creates a game in which cops and DAs write their own rules and that includes lying throughout the process without fear of being held accountable. We need good people in power who will fix problems, not ignore them to pander to their base.
Re: Unions and John Kass. In 1965, at the age of 25, I landed a dream job at a company that had union contracts. I am the son of a Republican lawyer. Like him I am a college graduate, and wore a suit to work. I could not see myself as a union member. My job overlapped the work of three craft unions. Those unions frequently complained about my transgressions and fined my employer. After two years I was forced to join a union. I reluctantly accepted the one third raise in salary, and the best health insurance I ever had until Medicare. Looking back it would have been immoral to opt out of dues or fees had that been possible in 1967. The union had many faults, but on balance it was the only way for members to get fair treatment from employers. Years later I became an employer myself and fought with those same unions over ridiculous rules and contributions to health insurance. Now, about John Kass. I am an old fashioned Liberal. He is the latest kind of conservative. There is nothing conservative about it. I looked upon his writing as a pox on the face of the Tribune. It was not just what he wrote about that I disagreed with, it was his vocabulary and the way he used it. The kindest way to describe the tenor of his Tribune columns was ugly. As in the Soros column, he regularly crossed the line. You know him as a person. It is very possible he is very different in person. The reader only has his text to get to know him. The John Kass I know from his column would bump the person in front of him with his shopping cart quite purposefully, just to get a reaction. Then he would apologize insincerely. You tell us that Kass is not antisemitic so I will accept that. But I can’t accept that he does not know the totality of what it means to invoke the name of George Soros. It is a dog whistle. Even before Trump, conservatives have raised the use of dog whistles to a level never seen in history. I believe in the first amendment, and John Kass has a right to his opinion, but from time to time I had to wonder if publishing that opinion was wasn’t just plain wrong.
On the murder rate, you can’t say it but…the correlation between Trump and Biden states has more to do with racial demographics than political ones. The black murder rate is 6 times that of whites, and 12 times as many robberies are black-on-white than vice versa. But saying this, I suppose, makes me a racist.
@Eric Zorn. I am glad you brought up people who get exonerated after being in jail. How many of those people would have been too unsavory to have been defended at their initial trials by lawyers who think it is beneath them?