For the practicing litigator, there’s nothing quite like a jury trial. Immense amounts of intense preparation, lots of paperwork to screw up, lots of evidence to handle. In my practice, some of my trials wind up getting sprung on me with very little notice and very little opportunity to prepare; I had the experience of sorting through a client’s files last night after he had used the “Cuisinart” method of filing. Those who practice criminal law will have little sympathy for me, I know. The chaos, the dread, the confusion, and ultimately, the tension are among the least pleasant things about the work. And then there’s the uncertainty — after keeping one eye on the forest and one eye on every vein on every leaf on every tree for a week, driving the people around you crazy, then you have to wait for twelve people to decide that they liked the other lawyer’s animal print tie better than yours so that’s why they voted for them. I’d say there has to be a better way, and I suppose there is, but as stressed out as this sort of thing makes me, it still looks like the least bad method of ensuring fairness available.
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Last jury I was on, I found in favor of the plaintiff, despite them having a slimeball of a lawyer trying a country lawyer shtick that he could NOT pull off to save his life.
You humble me. It’s as if the lawyer’s personality was not the most important thing!
Indeed it wasn’t. Picking up the spare $20 a day for two weeks — good money!
[The ice-lawyer from MetLife had the judge Completely Pissed Off for wasting his time, over a few thousand bucks and one check.]
Burt, a very big thank-you for the gracious words in your previous post.
I have the greatest respect for you, so such comments coming from you, make me deeply appreciative.
I understand I’m still on thin ice, probation, what have you, but not being able to post comments on the main page is precisely what gets me in trouble. On the sub-blog, I seem sometimes to get in the middle of a dialogue which I mistakenly take to be on the same topic and then things quickly fall apart.
The problem arises because once the comments on the sub-blog are posted their shelf-life quickly ends and at which point, they can’t be retrieved—there is no “older” option to click-on, like the main page has.
Hey, that’s my problem. Beggars can’t be choosers, but maybe sometime when my period of probation has expired, if it ever does, I can get bumped up to the main page.
Again, my sincere thanks for your kind remarks. H
One other thing, Burt. The posting I just made is a perfect example of what I was talking about–I wasn’t able to retrieve your earlier comments about the SSM post and here I am going off topic.
Sorry for barging in with an off-topic post–just wanted to show you how and why these things happen. Bye.
Burt, reading your post just gave me a great idea for a book–wouldn’t it interesting to look at the legal systems of all 193 countries that exist today, and see the similarities and differences? I think it would be fascinating, not only from a legal point of view, but also as a way of understanding the core values, religion, and cultural differences each country has. If you really want to understand what makes a country tick, look at their legal system. I would be particularly interested in changes the German legal system underwent from the Weimar days to the end of the war, 1945.
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; it is justice that hurts. ~H.L. Mencken
When a country has been conquered, what happens to the existing legal authority? Can Wehrmacht soldiers just walk into a bank and demand x amount of cash? Or go into an art museum and say, “Gee, I really love this Rembrandt–can you please securely wrap it up for me–I’ll be by to pick it later.”
Does all controlling legal authority get tossed right out the window? Maybe it all depends on who the conquerors are, but it sure is hard to imagine Nazi SS soldiers having any respect for the private property rights of the vanquished.
In the meantime, I am sending you a check for $100,000 as a commission for this work–if your series about “great cases” is any indication of your scholarly skills an talents, you would be a natural for writing about, Man, And The Laws He Lives Under. It would be fun to start with Adam and Eve and show how the evolution of law has changed since then. And I bet your first customer would be Antonin Scalia!
p.s. I’m using Adam and Eve in the figurative and metaphorical sense. Something just tells me we’ve been around a lot longer than 6,000 years.
p.p.s. Just heard the Shroud of Turin has been declared authentic by scientists investigating this enduring mystery. To all the Atheists at the League, I will be conducting baptisms at sunset in Lake St. Clair! It’s never too old to repent brother sand sisters, in Christ.
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; it is justice that hurts. ~H.L. Mencken
When there’s a single thief, it’s robbery. When there are a thousand thieves, it’s taxation.
Punishment is now unfashionable… because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility. ~Thomas Szasz