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Randler posted:Criminal defense lawyers provide the same service regardless of whether they are public defenders, employees or freelancers. The distinction the lawyers' motivation to perform that service do not alter my opinion of the service itself. You don't think motivation behind an action matters at all? I guess all surgeons are violent criminals then, look at all the people they cut with knives!
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Jun 9, 2019 15:38
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Cockmaster posted:Are there really that many lawyers whose career goals explicitly include helping rich assholes get away with horrible crimes? Probably not many but also who cares. I'm open to a theoretical argument that trying to get rich assholes absolved of their crimes for the sheer love of evil is more ignoble than doing it because it's lucrative, if you want to make that argument. But I can tell you my response will be that they're both wrong even if they aren't equally bad, and "well at least he isn't doing something even worse" isn't much of a moral defense to, well anything.
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Jun 9, 2019 16:56
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Lol are we really pretending the motive of someone who charges $20,000 an hour to defend the rich isn't obvious. And are we really pretending that we can't figure out why someone would be a public defender
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Jun 9, 2019 17:24
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I’m not sure the concept defense lawyers support crime makes any sense at all. Are you really trying to argue it's metaphysically impossible for any lawyer ever to be motivated by money rather than altruism and belief in public service
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Jun 9, 2019 18:03
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Main Paineframe posted:Of course there are. Just as there are many lawyers whose career goals explicitly include putting as many poor black people in prison as possible, regardless of their actual guilt. After all, those are the two paths to fame, fortune, and political power for an ambitious lawyer. I think that the argument is that since the motivations are mercenary and not sadistic, it's ok. Don't hate the player, hate the game, it's the system that incentivizes individual lawyers who pursue wealth and social status to help people of means to get away with crimes. No individual is morally responsible. And then there's this odd corollary where even the mildest token effort to readjust these bad incentives by, say ostracization or employment sanctions by individual firms, is punishing individuals for responding to incentives to do bad and therefore must not be done. So basically a bad system incentivizes bad behavior and that's regrettable but we must never incentivize good behavior because that would be unfair to the individuals behaving badly.
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Jun 9, 2019 18:32
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Public defenders are in on a money-grubbing racket to uh strategically go six figures in debt then live in poverty for decades to get that debt forgiven and get back to zero, instead of using their intelligence and skills to study for literally any more renumerative career. This is a serious argument and not a pathetically cynical attempt to draw moral equivalence between the people struggling to fight for the downtrodden in an unjust system and the scumbags at the top profiting off this unjust and immoral system 
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Jun 9, 2019 19:38
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Randler posted:Yes, to me motivations behind an action do not matter when judging an action, because only the action itself affects stuff and should therefore be considered separately. Bolded the part where you sneaked in a motivation to distinguish surgery from butchery. Also note how you had to include a qualifier: "generally" good, to acknowledge that the exact same action which is good in one circumstance can be bad under other circumstances. Motivation is central to our moral frameworks, it's also how we distinguish an actor giving a Nazi speech in an antiNazi movie from a Nazi giving a Nazi speech in a Nazi film. It's also central to our legal system, it's why you have to prove state of mind to prove most crimes, because the exact same action can be criminal or not depending on someone's state of mind. But sure let's throw out 6000 of legal and ethical thought if a lawyer has a chance to score some green why not
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Jun 9, 2019 20:55
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OwlFancier posted:I mean I'd personally argue that capability and circumstance rather than motivation are what distinguishes surgery from butchery. You don't get to do surgery just because you're extremely motivated to help someone. I didn't mean to imply that motivation was the only distinguishing factor but it is among them. You don't get to cut people up for any purpose just because you're a capable surgeon and they're sick, either. Your intent needs to be that what you're doing is in the best interests of the patient. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jun 9, 2019 |
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Jun 9, 2019 21:28
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OwlFancier posted:I mean generally it's more that they consent to it and stuff, people assume the motivation sure but really what matters is that you are capable and the context (they need surgery, they understand and have consented to it, other surgeons judge that you have done it properly if it comes to review). The procedures that caused the opioid crisis followed all these rules you've laid down: sick/injured people, consent, following the rules, medical consensus, yet the outcome was very bad because greed permeated everything. OwlFancier posted:A fairly strict consequentialist view does work and doesn't really come out on the side of the justice system either I don't think. Given that I'd probably criticise it primarily by its outcomes. But yes in that case as you point out, the outcome of helping perpetuate a system of special treatment for the rich is clearly bad, so Sullivan can't be justified on consequentialist grounds. Like nothing bad will happen if Weinstein has to get a public defender assigned to him, so Sullivan is obviously not achieving some greater good by defending him instead of some other potential client, in fact it's a greater harm VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Jun 9, 2019 |
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Jun 9, 2019 21:59
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Cockmaster posted:Which is probably the #1 reason not to get into the habit of shaming criminal defense lawyers for doing their job. Nobody is doing that because defending any client who walks through the door is not a private attorney's job (it is a public defender's job). Private attorneys can turn down clients for any reason they wish (short of illegal discrimination under federal law), for example they can turn a client down for something like not having enough money. If it is cool and good to turn someone down for being poor then clearly we can judge someone who does that by the clients they do choose to represent. E: unless we want to make the argument that being poor is worse than being a rapist VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Jun 10, 2019 |
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Jun 10, 2019 01:55
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Dead Reckoning posted:I'm not really clear on what your overarching philosophy is here. Are people above a certain income bracket not entitled to a presumption of innocence? Because "lawyers who defend rich people are scum, but PDs are saints" seems to assume that. Yes they are entitled to a legal presumption of innocence, but I don't see how not getting an expensive attorney denies them that. Unless your argument is that being unable to afford an attorney equals a presumption of guilt. There is a colorable argument that this is how our legal system indeed functions, but that is not an argument for a system of special treatment for the rich. (Well not to me, your philosophy is obviously different, since I have yet to see an extrajudicial execution that you won't defend by presuming that the victim must have been guilty of something) Thinking about this more, you might be confused about the difference between a legal presumption of innocence in a courtroom, and social consequences for one's actions. If a bunch of altar boys report that a priest is raping them he is entitled to a legal presumption of innocence but that does not mean we send those boys back into his care unless and until he's charged and convicted (tbf the Catholic Church does disagree with me on this point and is in fact very interested in a having system that protects abusers) Dead Reckoning posted:Do you think that the government prosecuting you also being allowed to choose who defends you might present some problems or conflicts of interest? Since that has how the public defender system works, this would be an argument for requiring any defense lawyer to defend any client who walks in their door, for free or for a standard fee paid by the government. It certainly isn't an argument for allowing only the rich to choose who defends them. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 17:13
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Dead Reckoning posted:Your suggestion was light on details, so you can't really criticize people for making assumptions about how it would work in practice. If everyone gets a public defender, how are they assigned? Does the defendant have any choice about who represents them? What happens when the number of cases exceeds local or global capacity? Can a person pay for other aspects of their legal defense, like specialists or experts to advise their appointed attorney? Are you ok with how the public defender system works now? If so, then what's the problem. Are you ok with people being denied specialists or experts if they can't pay? If so, then what's the problem. There's a fundamental contradiction in your argument, you can't both argue that private representation and expert advice is a basic legal right without which a fair trial is impossible, and then also be okay with denying that right based on wealth. That makes no sense. I mean you can argue that, you just have to be okay with the only resolution to that contradiction which is that poor people have no right to a fair trial.
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Jun 11, 2019 17:39
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Ogmius815 posted:Or maybe they aren’t either good or bad because lawyers are not responsible for what their clients do. Ah the IBM defense: "we only facilitated the final solution" Lawyers yes are not responsible for what their clients do. But, like all humans with moral agency, lawyers are responsible for their own actions, and an unethical act is still unethical even if someone else is paying you to do it.
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Jun 11, 2019 19:18
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Dead Reckoning posted:Do you think we should abolish and collectivize grocery stores because the wealthy can walk in and use their cash money to buy things not on the WIC approved list? But even if I grant your premise that we shouldn't collectivize grocery stores for some reason, this analogy doesn't work because by definition lobster or caviar or whatever it is the rich are buying aren't a basic need. If they are, they should be provided to the poor. If not, then it's no problem and it's no problem if the rich can't get them either for some reason. I don't think they should be denied out of spite but I don't care if rich people not having lobster is a consequence of some other good policy. If basic needs aren't on the WIC approved list that's an argument for expanding the list, not for saying "ok having basic needs met is only for the rich then". Is your argument that hiring a private lawyer is a basic requirement for justice to be done, or not? Dead Reckoning posted:People have a right to choose their legal representation. The purpose of the public defender system is to ensure that everyone has access to legal representation at criminal trials even if they cannot afford it. Then you don't think everyone has the right to choose their legal representation, because you explicitly condition that right on having money, while everyone without money has their representation chosen for them by the government. Also, do you think that lawyers have the right to turn down clients ( for monetary or non-monetary reasons?) Clearly it can't be both, if people have a right to choose their legal representation then lawyers can't have a right to refuse, if lawyers have a right to refuse then people can't have a right to choose their legal representation. I think that everything that is essential to a fair trial be provided to the defendant for the government for free, just as it's provided to the prosecutor for free by the government. If your position is that without a legal team consisting of at least one graduate of a T10 law school plus two subject matter experts a trial isn't fair (or whatever minimum of legal assistance you define), then that should be provided to everyone for free. That conclusion is inescapable because anything other than a fair trial is unjust. The only way to conclude that such things shouldn't be available to those who can't pay is to argue that it makes no difference to the outcome of the case, so we can still have a just system while allowing such unnecessary luxuries to the rich. But then it obviously isn't a right, and it makes no difference whether a rich dude is able to have it or not, just as it makes no difference whether we allow a rich guy to pay extra to have a Swedish massage during the trial or the right to choose his walking-into-court theme song. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 19:49
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Also I'm not sure it makes sense to argue that a lawyer should be free to turn down a client who wants to hire them but a law firm shouldn't be free to turn down a lawyer who wants to work for them. Why are they being held to different standards, why is it ok for a lawyer to refuse a client legal representation, but not ok for a law firm to indirectly do the same thing by refusing to hire that lawyer. That makes no sense to me. You could argue that if a lawyer turns you down you can go find another lawyer, but by the same argument if a law firm refuses to let their lawyers represent you you can go to another firm or the lawyer in question can go work for another firm. You could argue that the firm should be forced to comply to prevent the theoretical situation of every firm in the country firing a lawyer for representing you, but by the same argument any lawyer should be forced to comply to prevent the theoretical situation of every private lawyer in the country turning you down.
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Jun 11, 2019 20:09
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wateroverfire posted:It's impractical to suggest that every defendant should have an unlimited government-funded budget to use in their defense - why wouldn't every defendant spend as much as possible? - and it's super problematic to suggest that because not everyone can afford the best lawyers (or any lawyers at all) that no one should be able to pay for their own laywer. If the argument is that justice is impractical then it really calls into question whether we should be putting anyone in jail at all. E: I don't think that you make an unjust system "more just" by making it unfair. Like, I think imprisoning people for possession of marijuana is unjust, but I don't think that it would be more just if a hefty bribe to the judge got your case dismissed, even though the result of this added unfairness is fewer people unjustly imprisoned, would you not agree that overall the system has become less just? And I don't think it makes it better if we relieve of the judge of committing a crime by just explicitly writing into law that our unjust penalties don't apply if you meet a net worth threshold. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 20:11
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wateroverfire posted:Probably we should be putting in jail some of the people we put in jail, but not others. Maybe not most of them. That's a good point, one way to make the "impractical" costs of proper legal representation more manageable would be a system that doesn't seek to criminalize poverty and rely on mass incarceration for profit and slave labor in the first place! If you're arresting fewer people you can afford to pay for a proper defense.
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Jun 11, 2019 20:19
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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? Dead Reckoning posted:Does it matter whether the lawyer was a PD, Pro Bono, or paid? Yes. Protecting the rights of the accused is good, protecting the rights of only certain accused if they have money is morally wrong. I don't think that adding unfairness to an unjust system makes it more just, I think it makes it more unjust. If poor people are having their rights violated without recourse because the PD system isn't doing its job (which is why the rich rapist had to hire a private lawyer in the first place) then just as above, we should be willing to commit a small injustice in order to prevent greater injustices. We should subject the rich to the same unjust system the poor are subject to, in order to incentivize the rich to change the system. Just as we let the rapist go in order to incentivize the police to respect the constitution.
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Jun 11, 2019 20:36
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wateroverfire posted:I agree but I don't think allowing people to hire their own laywers if they can afford them rises to the threshold of any of that, though. If PDs are poo poo then we should fix that (I don't think PDs are poo poo, by and large. In at least some juristictions they're paid on the same scale as prosecuters - I want to say California is an example?) If the PDs are fine then it's not problematic that rich and poor alike have to rely on them. That is obvious. It's only if the PDs are not fine that it's even a problem.
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Jun 11, 2019 20:38
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wateroverfire posted:If the lawyer decided to defend a rapist because even rapists are entitled to a defense, would that be good? If they charge so much that only the richest rapists can afford their defense then I am comfortable saying that it isn't their motive. "I will defend any rapist because even rapists deserve a defense" is different from "even rapists deserve a defense unless they aren't millionaires"
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Jun 11, 2019 20:41
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Main Paineframe posted:If it's impractical, why don't you lay out for us how it's totally practical to pay for the prosecution side of every case but not the defense side of every case, Well that's easy, railroading a hapless poor is cheap, securing a conviction against a well-prepared defense attorney is not as cheap. Underfunding criminal defense is a great cost-saver on the prosecution side!
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Jun 11, 2019 20:49
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wateroverfire posted:"Every client deserves a defense and I like getting paid" seems a consistent set of motivations. It's literally a contradiction. E: do you think there's a moral difference between selling drugs near cost in order to be able to keep manufacturing them, and patent vultures who buy up medicines and jack up the price 40,000x times? Like a difference that doesn't reduce down to "I like getting paid" VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 20:50
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wateroverfire posted:I think that between those two extremes there is a reasonable stance, at least until we hit a post-scarcity state. Right I agree, that's why I can look at circumstances and context and say "this guy getting rich off defending rich scumbags is a scumbag" while still making the allowance that some other guy can be a good person balancing his ideals with his need to have food and shelter and a decent life. I don't have to treat those two people exactly the same!
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Jun 11, 2019 21:03
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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? Well I would argue that it's not immoral to refuse to give free insulin to everyone who cannot pay because ultimately the costs of manufacturing have to be paid for and the manufacturer has to eat besides, and yet it is immoral to demand $10,000 a dose for that insulin because the manufacturer can get really rich by restricting medicine to the superrich. There is a pretty big moral difference between an individual who is incapable of single-handedly solving a systemic problem (which should be done by a public service) and an individual who exacerbates a systemic problem out of greed.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:09
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Schubalts posted:Public defenders aren't the only lawyers who will represent poor people and minorities (ethnic, sexual, etc). You said that if I hate Harvey Weinstein's lawyer it won't stop with rich people's lawyers. You're either arguing (1) if I hate bad people for being bad people I will inevitably start hating people for being black or queer, which is a dumb argument; or (2) that somehow my hating bad people for being bad causes other people to hate black people or queer people, which is not any less dumb
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Jun 11, 2019 23:14
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If the pastor doesn't think gay people with AIDS have human rights, how is an argument that legal representation is a human right supposed to convince him that gay people with AIDS should have legal representation. Also in this scenario is Denzel saying "btdubs if Hanks were poor you bet your rear end I wouldn't help his broke rear end get his job back"
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Jun 11, 2019 23:31
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Schubalts posted:I did not say anything of the sort, what the hell? Yes I do which is why I find the argument that rich lawyers suffering social consequences for doing scummy things is a slippery slope to black people being hated for their skin color ridiculous. It's clear that bigotry exists already, has existed long before we were born, and is not a reaction to my opinion of Sullivan. It's obvious that bigots who want lawyers to be hated for representing gay people feel that way because they hate gay people, and aren't interested in a social contact where they stop hating gay people's lawyers in exchange for me being nicer to Harvey. It is obvious that the only consequence to me unilaterally defending rich scumbags is rich scumbags getting defended, it sure isn't going to convince homophobes to be cool to my hypothetical lawyer. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 23:50
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Ogmius815 posted:Okay, but this leaves you with no good response when people start condemning lawyers who defend clients they think are icky but who you want to protect. You might say those people are wrong, but that won’t matter to the lawyers in their community, who have to live and make their reputations by the standards of their community, not twodot’s master moral codex that is always right. Why would bigots follow this social contact, I don't think they love Harvey Weinstein more than they hate black people. Like their goal is black people suffering, clearly they aren't going to be swayed by the argument that black people will suffer if they break the contract! And I doubt they're so horny for a privileged legal system for the rich that they're willing to be cool to black people so Weinstein can rape with impunity. Even if I waved a magic wand and convinced them that they shouldn't judge lawyers based on the people they represent, if they don't think black people are really people then there's no contradiction in them hating lawyers whose clients aren't people. Like that's how prejudice works, you define some group as not really people so you can believe in human rights for some people and not others. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Jun 12, 2019 |
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Jun 12, 2019 00:02
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