Posted on 10/05/2009 10:14:32 AM PDT by stan_sipple
The ABA Journal has this interesting thought attributed to Justice Scalia. Asked to comment on whether the quality of advocacy before the U.S. Supreme Court was too low, Justice Scalia is quoted as saying:
“I used to have just the opposite reaction. I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise.
“I mean there’d be a … public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?
“I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table, and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.”
Justice Scalia is at his provocative best here, forcing us to wonder whether our legal system now pervasively controls so many aspects of our society that too many of the best minds have to go into the profession.
need we say more?
On rare occasions where they maintain the Constitutional Rights of individuals.
Russia really doesn't care if you fall into open holes -- 8 feet deep, too -- on their major highways, or your elevator malfunctions and you plunge to your death, and so on.
We need to take 1/2 our lawyers and airdrop them into Russia.
I believe that most of the country’s problems could be solved if we set all of the lawyers adrift on a giant raft in the ocean.
But the U.S. doesn't believe in bio-warfare... ;-P
Lawyers are like guns.
You can get rid of them all, but you take mine last.
As one one of my professors said to a class room full of first year law students, while trying to make the same point as Scalia:
“You are transaction costs!”
We need to take 1/2 our lawyers and airdrop them into Russia.
I like that solution but I suggest we bump that figure up to 3/4th. ;^)
That would be fine with me provided we employ no parachutes in the effort.
This reminds me of the movie, Devil’s Advocate, when Satan was asked why he chose lawyers to be his instruments for the destruction of humanity. Lawyers have their fingers in everything. I could write a treatise on the problem with lawyers and the law, but that is not stated topic. Lawyers do produce things: grief.
and they admit it? They do know who they are for sure.
Of course there are true circumstances and situations that cry out for justice.
Every public business has raised costs and charges ... mostly because of litigation against them It is the public that pays. IE the cost of health care, Doctors, insurance companies, and all the buyers of all types of insurance ... including home owners insurance.
Poor members of juries believe that Corporations, Doctors,monied people can pay any amount: and after all is it fair for them to be so rich?
Not in their eyes. We are to be equal before the law. We all know it is not likely to actually happen that way. DUI'S against the poor, or illegal aliens is usually dropped and they are released with a warning etc. Let it happen to ordinary middle class and they end up paying both fines and jail time. (exceptions if you know the right people.
I do believe in the law and the necessity of supporting the law as intended Justly, showing no favoritism. Which is almost impossible to achieve now.
I totally agree.
Most lawyers aren’t trial lawyers. If they are absolutely required in the other areas they work in is another question. I would guess someone would be fulfilling the same job even if they weren’t called a lawyer.
They are a body of egos struggling to produce the living constitution and kill the old one.
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