The core doctrines of the lawyer profession descended from the Scholasticist monks of the 13th Century.
I. To convict of a crime requires the reading of minds, called the mens rea, the guilty mind. Thus a hunter who shot another to death, thinking him a deer goes home. The hunter who shot the other because the other's wife paid him to do it gets the death penalty. The same act with the same victim outcome has disparately differing results depending on the thinking of the criminal. The lawyer makes this more complicated by inserting a hybrid state of mind, criminal recklessness, with some amount of intent. In reality, half of crimes are committed while drunk, where even the criminal has no idea what intent he had. In some cases, the crime took place during an alcohol memory blackout. There is no evidence that this form of mind reading achieves any serious goal of the criminal law, such as public safety, nor any evidence that it protects the innocent from punishment. Where is the evidence the careless hunter is any less dangerous to the public than the disciplined contract killer?
II. To collect a verdict or a settlement in torts law requires the prediction of future rare accidents. These have the reliability of predicting the winning lottery numbers.
III. The physiologically based results of a lie detector machine is banned from introduction as evidence in a trial. However, twelve strangers off the street are viewed as good truth detectors, by their use of their gut feelings.
IV. The most central doctrine of the law is the word, reasonable.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
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