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Ogmius815 posted:In other words, you think that only people who behave the way you want are entitled to legal representation. No I support a system of public defenders who are required to defend anyone they are asked to defend.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:11
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Ogmius815 posted:So I’ll revise: you think that lawyers should have to face social opprobrium for representing people who don’t behave the way you want. No. There should be no opprobrium for a lawyer who is legally required to represent people who don't behave the way I want. Ogmius815 posted:But because not everyone in the country agrees with your standards of behavior, that’s going to make it harder for some people you probably do like to get fair legal representation. Ogmius815 posted:Let me put it this way: were the townspeople right to turn against Atticus Finch because he defended a black person accused of rape? Don’t respond “but that guy wasn’t guilty”, that hadn’t been established to the community’s satisfaction. The right to a public defender didn't exist in 1935 when the story was set, it's a good argument for that system so the rights of the accused don't depend on whether he can find a non-racist lawyer in the Jim Crow South! E: and also yes I agree social opprobrium for bad people is good, and social opprobrium for good people is bad. I think it is good when racists lose their jobs for being racists, I think it is bad when minorities lose their jobs because of racism. Even though both things can be boiled down to "people losing their jobs for behaving in ways someone doesn't like", because I am right to dislike racists, and other people are wrong to like racists, and I don't have to treat good things and bad things the same. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 21:14
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wateroverfire posted:Should lawyers NOT want to get paid? Should doctors? Should everyone? You're not doing very well with this whole "let's ignore the money problem"
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Jun 11, 2019 21:16
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Dead Reckoning posted:If a rapist gets the charges gains him dismissed, because his lawyer gets the overwhelming physical evidence against him thrown out, because the police gathered the evidence in the course of an illegal, warrantless search, is this a Good thing, or a Bad thing? Does it matter whether the lawyer was a PD, Pro Bono, or paid? It’s a necessary evil to control the police and prevent illegal searches from happening in the future. In other words, it’s good, but only in the comparative sense that the alternative is that there is no real incentive for the police to take out fourth amendment rights seriously. SCOTUS jurisprudence confirms this. Note, for example, that we don’t apply changes to criminal procedure rules retroactively. If you are convicted based on evidence produced by a search that was probably legal at the time it happened, you won’t get out of prison just because the Supreme Court later made a rule under which the search would have been illegal. twodot posted:Lawyers that have the ability to pick and choose their clients are responsible for how they pick and choose clients. If a professional picks and chooses horrible monsters to pay them for their services, I will always hold them accountable for that. You can choose otherwise, but you can't ignore the lawyer is making choices here. I don’t disagree that the lawyer makes a choice. I’m saying that choice is morally neutral. That’s an official doctrine of legal ethics, by the way. Lawyers are not morally responsible for the positions they take on behalf of their clients. I understand why that seems uncomfortable (especially from the purity obsessed and extraordinarily self-righteous perspective of the current D&D majority), but we think that way for a reason. That reason is that we want people who society disapproves of to be able to obtain legal representation. Sometimes society is full of it, you see.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:19
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And again I'm not sure why a lawyer should be free to turn down scumbag clients but I'm not free to treat a lawyer with social opprobrium for their choice. Why am I being held to a higher standard than the lawyers themselves? Why is it cool and good for a lawyer to say "nah you don't deserve my defense" but somehow an injustice for me to say the same thing? Why is the burden of legal representation placed on me, and not on the lawyers themselves. Any argument against me saying "what an rear end in a top hat" about a lawyer's choice of clients is an even stronger argument against any lawyer being allowed to turn anyone down for any reason ever. E: Ogmius815 posted:I don’t disagree that the lawyer makes a choice. I’m saying that choice is morally neutral. Like this, clearly that has to apply to my opinion of the lawyer too. If it's morally neutral for the lawyer to say "nah you suck you don't get a defense" why is it wrong for me to say that. E2: Ogmius815 posted:That reason is that we want people who society disapproves of to be able to obtain legal representation. Sometimes society is full of it, you see. Conveniently this would also solve the societal disapproval problem since lawyers have no choice they can't be deterred by disapproval. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 21:22
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twodot posted:This can only be true if you also agree that poor people are fundamentally unable to get fair legal representation in the current system, in which case I don't much care about degrading the ability of rich people to get fair legal representation. No not really. Because the context of this remark is about divorce attorneys (the poster up thread said that divorce attorneys who represent abusive husbands are bad). Nobody gets a free divorce attorney just because they’re poor. You ether pay for one or you don’t get one. The quote about rich people is very telling here, by the way. It’s very clear don’t actually care about due process. You just want to hurt the people you don’t like. I understand. That’s a very common human moral failing.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:24
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VitalSigns posted:No I support a system of public defenders who are required to defend anyone they are asked to defend. But that doesn’t work outside the very narrow case of criminal defense work. Should we also have a massive system of free civil litigators? I don’t think that’s workable.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:25
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Ogmius815 posted:That’s an official doctrine of legal ethics, by the way. quote:Lawyers are not morally responsible for the positions they take on behalf of their clients. quote:That reason is that we want people who society disapproves of to be able to obtain legal representation. edit: Ogmius815 posted:No not really. Because the context of this remark is about divorce attorneys (the poster up thread said that divorce attorneys who represent abusive husbands are bad). Nobody gets a free divorce attorney just because they’re poor. You ether pay for one or you don’t get one. Eh, actually I think the argument still works. If being a horrible monsters make it hard to find an attorney, and not having money makes it hard to find an attorney, then I'm basically always much more interested in fixing the "not having money makes it hard to find an attorney" first and we can let the horrible monsters participate in whatever system we have for people with no money. If that system is "welp you don't get to have an attorney", then I'm unclear why I'm supposed to care that this system is being applied to horrible monsters and poor people. twodot fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 21:26
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Ogmius815 posted:No not really. Because the context of this remark is about divorce attorneys (the poster up thread said that divorce attorneys who represent abusive husbands are bad). Nobody gets a free divorce attorney just because they’re poor. You ether pay for one or you don’t get one. Well obviously it's not an injustice to not get a divorce attorney then. Unless your position is that poor people should be treated unjustly! E: Ogmius815 posted:But that doesn’t work outside the very narrow case of criminal defense work. Should we also have a massive system of free civil litigators? I don’t think that’s workable. I guess that depends on whether you think being unable to get a civil litigator is an injustice. If it's not, then it's no problem if someone can't get one either because they're poor or because I don't like them. If it is an injustice then you're saying anything other than treating the poor unjustly is unworkable, which calls into question the point of having a legal system at all.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:27
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twodot posted:We all want this. Not a single person in this thread has ever argued bad people should not be able to obtain legal representation. Then you’re missing my point, which is that if we make the rule that a lawyer should face social opprobrium for representing clients that society finds to be nasty, it will be harder for all of society’s outsiders to obtain good representation.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:34
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Unlike now where it's only the poor outsiders who eat poo poo while the rich ones get off scott free.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:36
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Ogmius815 posted:Then you’re missing my point, which is that if we make the rule that a lawyer should face social opprobrium for representing clients that society finds to be nasty, it will be harder for all of society’s outsiders to obtain good representation. twodot posted:Eh, actually I think the argument still works. If being a horrible monsters make it hard to find an attorney, and not having money makes it hard to find an attorney, then I'm basically always much more interested in fixing the "not having money makes it hard to find an attorney" first and we can let the horrible monsters participate in whatever system we have for people with no money. If that system is "welp you don't get to have an attorney", then I'm unclear why I'm supposed to care that this system is being applied to horrible monsters and poor people.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:37
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Ogmius815 posted:Then you’re missing my point, which is that if we make the rule that a lawyer should face social opprobrium for representing clients that society finds to be nasty, it will be harder for all of society’s outsiders to obtain good representation. This is an argument for forcing lawyers to represent anyone and everyone. Because that's the only solution to this problem, if I can't get a lawyer because every lawyer thinks I suck then how is that better than if I can't get a lawyer because they are all afraid society will think they suck. Or because I am poor. If someone not getting representation from a specific lawyer is a grand injustice then why is that lawyer allowed to turn someone down in the first place.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:39
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VitalSigns posted:This is an argument for forcing lawyers to represent anyone and everyone.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:45
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VitalSigns posted:This is an argument for forcing lawyers to represent anyone and everyone. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not. I note, however, that it’s actually something of a leap from “no lawyer should face social condemnation because he represented a misbehaving client in an ugly case” to “no lawyer should ever have to opportunity to turn down any client”. How would you enforce that? Is there no room for specialization? Can I make Davis Polk represent me when I slip on pee pee at the megalomart? Can I make those Pacific Legal guys represent me in my pro-LGBT Title VII test case?
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Jun 11, 2019 21:47
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Ogmius815 posted:I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not. I note, however, that it’s actually something of a leap from “no lawyer should face social condemnation because he represented a misbehaving client in an ugly case” to “no lawyer should ever have to opportunity to turn down any client”.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:51
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Ogmius815 posted:I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not. I note, however, that it’s actually something of a leap from “no lawyer should face social condemnation because he represented a misbehaving client in an ugly case” to “no lawyer should ever have to opportunity to turn down any client”. Well how the hell would you enforce a law against social opprobrium? That's obviously much more difficult to enforce than regulations on licensed professionals! I guess the argument could be "it's okay if a single lawyer is a bigot because another lawyer might not be, but if there's an atmosphere of social opprobrium then an outsider might not get representation in a town full of bigots even if there's a nice lawyer who would be willing in the absence of opporbrium". Okay, but then the implication is that if all the lawyers are bigots too then it's actually fine? Why is that fine, isn't that just as bad? And from a practical standpoint, it's a whole lot easier (not to mention a whole lot more constitutional) to require a lawyer to be nondiscriminatory in order to keep his license than it is to make it illegal to express an unfavorable opinion about a lawyer. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 21:52
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Is it immoral to choose the defendant who can pay over the defendant who cannot if they are equally deserving of a defense? If it's just purely a matter of wanting everyone defended out of principle, then why should the lawyer even need to ask about the wealth levels of their potential clients? Though if you think about it, this isn't actually a real choice that anyone would ever have to make. If it's a matter of individual choice, then all the rich clients will be snapped up by the greedy unprincipled lawyers who specialize in defending the rich. And if the principle is enshrined in the system and all defense lawyers become public defenders, then lawyers won't get to pick their clients anyway. Ogmius815 posted:But that doesn’t work outside the very narrow case of criminal defense work. Should we also have a massive system of free civil litigators? I don’t think that’s workable. Why not? I don't see why it wouldn't be workable.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:07
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twodot posted:Is your imagination so limited? Lawyers have to register to do their job, you just make the registering body responsible for handing out assignments with an appeals process. Like public defenders manage to exist somehow, I'll admit ignorance to how specifically they are assigned cases, but there is clearly prior art out there. So basically every lawyer should be a public official who works for the government, like a public defender. So there are about 1.3 million lawyers in the US right now. Whether there are too many or too few is a matter of some debate (on one hand, there don’t seem to be jobs for all newly graduating lawyers, on the other hand there don’t seem to be enough lawyers to ensure everyone who needs legal representation can get it at a reasonable price). So let’s be conservative and say that the government would directly or indirectly employ ~1 million lawyers under this system. That’s already about half the size of the current federal civilian workforce. But whatever, let’s assume it would work. Fine. Done. In the absence of such a system (since it doesn’t exist today, won’t exist next year, and almost definitely won’t exist next decade either and we have to deal with reality) surely you can see the point that as things stand today, running lawyers out on a rail because they represented “bad” clients is just going to make attorneys think twice before they take on clients that society thinks are “bad”, some of whom are worthy of protection?
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Jun 11, 2019 22:20
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Ogmius815 posted:But whatever, let’s assume it would work. Fine. Done. In the absence of such a system (since it doesn’t exist today, won’t exist next year, and almost definitely won’t exist next decade either and we have to deal with reality) surely you can see the point that as things stand today, running lawyers out on a rail because they represented “bad” clients is just going to make attorneys think twice before they take on clients that society thinks are “bad”, some of whom are worthy of protection? twodot posted:You are either comfortable with the ability of people with no money to obtain good representation in which case I propose outsiders can use that system and still obtain good representation. Or you are not comfortable with that in which case we clearly need to fix the ability of people with no money to obtain good representation and worry about horrible monsters with money later.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:23
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I'm not sure why a system of free civil litigators wouldn't be workable either. Clearly the resources exist to support civil litigation, we have a system of civil litigation now using up resources contributed by people who want to use it. It's just gated by wealth so if you're poor best case you don't have access to it, worst case richer people use it to gently caress you. So the actual argument seems to be the resources don't exist to have a civil litigation system that treats the poor justly, which calls into question the morality of having that system at all. One counterargument could be that we could afford free civil litigation for non-frivolous cases, but if we make it free everyone will file frivolous cases all the time since it's free and bankrupt the system. But I don't agree with that argument because that problem exists now. Even if you have all the money in the world you still have to convince a lawyer to take your case. If zero lawyers will do it, you're out of luck. If in a hypothetical universal litigation system zero lawyers want to help you, you could appeal to the licensing authority, if they agree with you they assign someone if they disagree with you then your frivolous case doesn't clog up the courts. Judges also throw out frivolous suits and even sanction lawyers for bringing them now, so the idea that we can't solve a problem that we've already solved in the real world doesn't make sense to me.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:23
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Ogmius815 posted:surely you can see the point that as things stand today, running lawyers out on a rail because they represented “bad” clients is just going to make attorneys think twice before they take on clients that society thinks are “bad”, some of whom are worthy of protection? why is it fine to do it to the poor then also given the way poverty is racialized in the USA you can't solve the problem of lawyers not defending black people without solving the problem of lawyers not defending poor people
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Jun 11, 2019 22:30
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twodot posted:Also very much lol at "some of whom are worthy of protection". You dropped the act too early. I absolutely and completely agree that we need to do more to help people get affordable quality legal representation. My entire point is that the practice of punishing a lawyer socially because you don’t like his client will only exacerbate this problem. Look, I understand you don’t like it that people with money can sometimes make things work out better for them because they can pay good lawyers. But that’s just a problem with inequality in general. It isn’t a reason to stick it to rich people by trying to get their lawyers fired from their jobs, which will just make the whole problem worse, as I’ve explained.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:30
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Ogmius815 posted:But whatever, let’s assume it would work. Fine. Done. In the absence of such a system (since it doesn’t exist today, won’t exist next year, and almost definitely won’t exist next decade either and we have to deal with reality) surely you can see the point that as things stand today, running lawyers out on a rail because they represented “bad” clients is just going to make attorneys think twice before they take on clients that society thinks are “bad”, some of whom are worthy of protection? This terrible systemic existing today problem of... people who defend noted shithead harvey weinstein getting negative publicity from students is definitely ruining the country.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:32
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Ogmius815 posted:I absolutely and completely agree that we need to do more to help people get affordable quality legal representation. My entire point is that the practice of punishing a lawyer socially because you don’t like his client will only exacerbate this problem.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:36
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twodot posted:It is worth the cost. And if rich horrible monsters find their circumstances so dire that their situation is approximately equal to a poor person, perhaps they can work to reform the system so that everyone has good representation regardless of access to wealth. It’s interesting to note the set of priorities that’s clear from this post. It’s fine to make it harder for poor and vulnerable people to obtain legal representation if we can just stick it to rich people and their lawyers a bit. I don’t agree at all and I’m sure glad you aren’t in charge of anything.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:41
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Ogmius815 posted:It’s interesting to note the set of priorities that’s clear from this post. It’s fine to make it harder for poor and vulnerable people to obtain legal representation if we can just stick it to rich people and their lawyers a bit. I don’t agree at all and I’m sure glad you aren’t in charge of anything.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:43
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twodot posted:Calling Weinstein's lawyers dirtbags does literally no harm to anyone poor or vulnerable. Hope that helps. You’ve stopped bothering to engage with my point. I really love this discussion because it illustrates more broadly the general imperative at work in D&D right now, which is that the most important part of morality is pointing the a finger at bad people and condemning them. It doesn’t matter if the condemnation will make things better or worse for anyone, the point is just to be maximally self righteous all the time. I think it’s becoming gross and toxic.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:46
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Ogmius815 posted:It isn’t a reason to stick it to rich people by trying to get their lawyers fired from their jobs, which will just make the whole problem worse, as I’ve explained. I disagree, I think that subjecting rich people to the same unjust system that we subject poor people will create more pressure for reform from the rich and powerful. And I disagree that making a system less fair makes it more just even the unfairness results in more just outcomes for the small number beneficiaries of unfairness. We could make the unjust war on drugs "better" by looking the other way when a rich person bribes a judge to get out of the unjust punishment for possession. Or by explicitly codifying it into law that all our unjust laws no longer apply to the rich. That would objectively decrease the number of individual cases of injustice, but imo it would increase injustice in the system overall.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:46
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Ah yes all those poor people who would be hiring Harvey Weinstein's expensive lawyer if not for my opporbrium-posting E: I am very skeptical of the argument that somehow bigots are empowered by me calling Harvey Weinstein's lawyer a scumbag. It seems to me that if a black man can't get a lawyer in the South because of bigots, that those bigots will still bigot regardless of what I do. That is indisputable, therefore if I refuse to criticize Harvey Weinstein's lawyer, the only consequence will be helping rich scumbags be rich scumbags and it will have zero effect on helping the victims of invidious prejudice. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 22:49
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Ogmius815 posted:You’ve stopped bothering to engage with my point.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:49
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Ogmius815 posted:It’s interesting to note the set of priorities that’s clear from this post. It’s fine to make it harder for poor and vulnerable people to obtain legal representation if we can just stick it to rich people and their lawyers a bit. I don’t agree at all and I’m sure glad you aren’t in charge of anything. what is the damage done to poor and vulnerable people, who cannot afford private lawyers, by looking down on the people the rich and powerful purchase to keep them from any consequences of being a serial rapist. you have managed to find a dumber take than "let them eat cake;" weeping bitter, definitely-not-feigned tears over how the poor will eat if someone spits on Her Ladyship's pastry chef.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:50
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The point is that "punish a lawyer because ~the community~ doesn't like their clients" doesn't apply only to rich people's lawyers.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:54
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Schubalts posted:The point is that "punish a lawyer because ~the community~ doesn't like their clients" doesn't apply only to rich people's lawyers. Ding ding ding.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:55
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Schubalts posted:The point is that "punish a lawyer because ~the community~ doesn't like their clients" doesn't apply only to rich people's lawyers.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:56
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Ogmius815 posted:Ding ding ding. hmm, yes, if someone spits on her ladyship's personal pastry chef, what is to stop them from guillotining the baker
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Jun 11, 2019 22:58
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Schubalts posted:The point is that "punish a lawyer because ~the community~ doesn't like their clients" doesn't apply only to rich people's lawyers. Doesn't it? I don't think public defenders, who don't get to pick their clients, are worried that ~the community~ will hate them based on who they were assigned to defend.
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Jun 11, 2019 23:00
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Schubalts posted:The point is that "punish a lawyer because ~the community~ doesn't like their clients" doesn't apply only to rich people's lawyers. Can you show me a single bigot who would graciously refrain from hating a black man's lawyer once he saw how nice I was to Harvey Weinstein's legal team? That sounds about as unbelievable as the idea that the alt-right would have a change of heart if Kathy Griffin started being nicer to Donald Trump.
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Jun 11, 2019 23:00
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How do you enforce a law against hating rich people's lawyers anyway, even if you change the constitution to allow it, how do you enforce that. Or are you proposing we use social opprobrium to enforce this norm, surely that can't be the proposal because if you hate me for hating Weinstein's lawyer, then it won't stop there, other people will realize they can hate people for all kinds of reasons, uh-oh!
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Jun 11, 2019 23:05
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twodot posted:Everyone has already agreed that public defenders get an exception. Public defenders aren't the only lawyers who will represent poor people and minorities (ethnic, sexual, etc). VitalSigns posted:Can you show me a single bigot who would graciously refrain from hating a black man's lawyer once he saw how nice I was to Harvey Weinstein's legal team? Where are you getting this from? Who brought up "We have to be nice to them so they'll be nice to us"?
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Jun 11, 2019 23:10
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