Study: Child Porn Reduces Child Abuse

Review of other studies here.

The federal law is reviewed here.

It is indisputable that prosecution for child porn viewing is a big lawyer business.

The policy justification for this law is that buying child porn results in more production. Production is child sexual abuse. To be charitable, that conclusion is not a settled scientific question.

Should laws meet Daubert standards? If a law does not, should it be declared unconstitutional? The law may be based upon or emanate from an expression of religious faith, in violation of the Establishment Clause. Or, it may be based on false, anti-scientific assumptions, violating the procedural due process right of the defendant to a fair hearing.

See here. See the article here.

Study: Making Pornography More Accessible May Curb Child Abuse
By Alice Park Thursday, December 2, 2010 |


Whether pornography is an expression of free speech or a form of exploitation remains a hotly debated issue, and new research may only stir up the controversy further.

Scientists led by Milton Diamond at the University of Hawaii found that easing access to sexually explicit material may help lower sexual abuse of youngsters. Diamond's group compared rates of various crimes, including sexual abuse, murders, assaults and thefts, both before and after the fall of the communist regime in the Czech republic. Before a more liberal government gained power in the country in 1989, all forms of sexually explicit material, including magazines such as Playboy, were banned, and all nudity was considered pornographic. (More on Time.com: Will Polygamy Be Legalized in Canada?)

The new government, however, passed a law allowing some expressions of nudity, including child porn, and when Diamond and his group compared rates of child sexual abuse both before and after the communist regime was in power, they found that there were fewer cases of abuse after pornography became more accessible.

The data support previous work that found similar trends when pornography laws were relaxed in Japan and Denmark. Coupled with the fact that rates of other crimes did not change in the same time period in the Czech Republic, Diamond speculates that the reason for the decline in child sexual abuse could be due to the fact that potential offenders were able to substitute child pornography for sexual acts themselves. (More on Time.com: Is Banning Pro-Pedophilia Books the Right Answer?)

But not all child abuse experts buy that theory, and take issue with the idea that child pornography, in any form, could be considered an antidote to sexual abuse. “The study and its findings are provocative,” says Dr. Cindy Christian, chair of the Committee for Child Abuse and Neglect for the American Academy of Pediatrics and chair of Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, “but as a pediatrician I would never condone any child pornography even in order to protect other children from child sexual abuse.

Proportioality in the Arithmetic of Sentencing for Fraud and Other Financial Crimes

I have argued that someone who steals $6 million is destroying a constructive economic life, or whatever the consensus value of life is being used. Therefore, the defendant should be executed, summarily, since there is no controversy about the amount.

What about stealing $850,000? That is about an eighth of a human life. If the life expectancy is around 80 years these days, the defendant should serve an eighth of a human life or 10 years. During that time, he should be as productive as possible at whatever occupation, make as much money as he can. Say, he makes $425,000 as a hedge fund trader from prison. He may repay that amount and have his sentence reduced by a half. This person is not being incapacitated because of his physical danger to others, but because of his lack of good judgment and morals. He should do well in the structured setting of the prison.

MERSA - Al Qaeda Weapon of Mass Destruction

Given today's pat down procedures, Al Qaeda can recruit people with MERSA, or infect a suicide bomber with MERSA. Then, just have them travel continually. The TSA gloved inspectors would spread MERSA to dozens of people each time. Then Al Qaeda would laugh and send a thank you note to the TSA.

The Trial Itself Violates the Daubert Standard

The trial itself has no scientific validation. It comes from the Scholasticist method of disputation, as a method of arriving at the answer of a difficult question. The rules of evidence violate multiple tenets of formal logic, critical thinking theory, and most do not meet Daubert standards. Then you have a jury. In 1275 AD it was a good advance. The jurors had knowledge. They brought the wisdom of the crowd. Those benefits have been removed. You now have twelve strangers who will be using their gut feelings to detect the truth, when lie detectors are prohibited. They will detect likability, if lucky, and no more. The lawyer is excluding people with knowledge, and even people married to people with knowledge.

Next, the lawyer hobbles the most experienced person in court, the judge. This is the oldest lawyer, who may have done the jobs of the lawyers, and has the biggest experience. If he so much as drives by the crime scene, you will crush the judge. Why? The trial is a fictional play. Any attempt to introduce real facts cannot be tolerated.

The criminal law, is in utter failure. It has a high false negative rate (1 in 10 major crimes is prosecuted). It has a high false positive rate (there is 1 exoneration for every 5 executions). It uses methods from the 13th Century, when anyone else trying to would be arrested as a threat to public safety.

Here is one potential remedy. I propose to exclude all lawyers from all benches, legislative seats and responsible policy positions in the executive. Waiting for that to come about, an intermediate remedy would be to end all self-dealt immunities. Prosecutors and judges should be held to professional standards of due care. They qualify for strict liability because their sole product is punishment. However, that would be too draconian and would ruin them.

There is no justification for prosecutorial or judge immunity from either defendant nor from future crime victims. I find it funny when ALI types dispute this idea as a potential cause of litigation explosion.

To Get the Legislative Intent

If a law has recently been enacted, most of its drafters and supporters should still be alive. If term is ambiguous, has anyone ever interviewed the living enacters as to the real intent of legislature, as opposed to divination and mind reading?

If this has never been done, is there any procedural or constitutional obstacle to such a tactic? Naturally, both sides should be allowed to do an interview and to present their results, before a tribunal.

Complaints About 1L Miss the Biggest Problems

The problem is deeper. The content of the education is unacceptable, even unlawful. I understand the student is not getting prepared for the shredder that is practice later. One may think of the education as learning a language. One learns the grammar and vocabulary. Then later, one practices conversations and writings, on the outside with strangers. Those are shocking later. The comments address that shortcoming. This is a marginal and small problem.

Here is the big problem, and where the profession ends up damaging the nation.

Modern, very intelligent students are forced, against their wills, through intimidation, to accept supernatural doctrines and methods from medieval philosophy of Scholasticism, with its church origin. These were OK for 1275 A.D. They are ridiculous today. They explain the utter failure of every self-stated goal of every law subject. There is no practice from 1275 AD that is in any way acceptable in any other field. One could not even build cathedrals as they did. It would not be cathedral building malpractice. The police would arrest anyone attempting to as a threat to the public safety.

The student will resist these absurd, ridiculous core doctrines. That is where the intimidation, and the depressing cult indoctrination methodology comes in.

The student is force fed the ideas that minds can be read, that the future is foreseeable, that 12 strangers can detect the truth by using their gut feelings, after excluding all with knowledge (canceling the advantages of the medieval jury). Most important is to accept the central word of the law, reasonable. Why not a hundred alternative words? Beneficial, intelligent, common sensical, healthful, what my calm, caring friend would do, etc.

St. Thomas Aquinas explains. Man fell from the Garden of Eden, and intellect was subject to mistakes from the tendencies and temptations leading to mortal sins (prohibitions in the 10 Commandments). The sole reliable guide to moral decision making is the New Testament. And St. Thomas spends a great deal of effort in a deposition like proof. What is the technical meaning of reason in this context? It is the ability to perceive God. Reason best relies on the New Testament. That book is the story of Jesus. The reasonable person may very well be a hidden, disguised Jesus, and what he would do as described by the New Testament. The reasonable person must remain fictitious. Why? To be objective, of course. This reserves the seat of the reasonable person for Jesus.

This content is disturbing, ridiculously, laughably false, and intelligent students must be forced to accept it by intimidation. Thus the high pressure and other cult methods ongoing in law school. This includes taking 80 hours a week in exhausting, socially isolating study of minutiae, most of it, cult garbage.

That is the content. What about the structure? Disputation is the best method to arrive at some answer, according to the Scholasticists. So we get the adversarial system. There is no scientific evidence to support any part of the legal process. Disputation is chosen because the intellectual leaders were French or lived in France.

IRAC came from Sic et Non by Peter Abelard and friends of his. You see the tightest, best IRAC reading St. Thomas.

The medieval rules of evidence are ridiculous, and result in a high rate of false convictions.

The profession has also adopted the business model and methods of the Inquisition, ongoing by 1275 AD. The Inquisition was excellent, and lasted 800 years. It ended when, again the French, beheaded and expelled 10,000 church officials during the French Revolution. The lawyer picked it up, without missing a beat. The regulations were infinite. The penalties draconian. The targets were sincerely grateful when a plea bargain was offered, enriching the church, and saving the life of the accused.

The coercive cult methods. The ridiculous core doctrines. The organized crime style of making money. The devastation to the interests of the nation. The total failure of every self-stated goal. That would make for some dissatisfaction, even among those who will get rich off it.

Why Do Some Jurisdictions Have Low Crime Rates Despite Poverty?

Crime persists when crime pays, and grows when it pays well. The US endures over 20 million FBI Index felonies (murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault; property crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft; and arson), and has only 2 million prosecutions. There is a 90% chance of not being prosecuted after committing these major crimes. If prosecuted, there is over a 90% chance of being charged with a lesser, or even fictitious lesser crime in a plea bargain. In this plea bargain, there is less than a 10% chance of going to prison, depending on the damage caused by the original crime. Thus, when non-violent criminals are set to be released due to prison overcrowding, there is no way to know the released inmate is dangerous, because he may have pled to a non-violent offense.

Prices equalize rapidly today. So the cost of a minimum standard of living for an America lifestyle is the same over the world. So, maintaining a family on $1000 a year is as difficult in India as it is in the US. Such stress pushes people into interdependence and gives the family greater value as a survival tool. Thus the rate of bastardy is lower in places with severe poverty.

One may generalize that the police is not harder working nor more competent than in wealthier areas. The productivity of the police cannot be a factor in areas of extreme poverty.

That leaves only one factor. The amount of self help is much greater than in wealthy areas.

To Improve the Jury Method, Get Medieval

The jury is a methodology, like timing a car with a radar gun. It must be proven accurate. Its management must be standardized under the edict of the Equal Protection Clauses. Like a radar gun, it must be maintained, calibrated and retested for accuracy every day.

Unlike the radar gun, this tool is used by the lawyer to put people to death, and to transfer $trillions, and to have untold but important effects on the economy, the culture and the behavior of the public.

How can it be improved?

1) Selection should reflect statistical principles. If it to represent the population at large, random selection from the entire population is essential. That means, no one can get out of it. And the selection is random.

2) Stop excluding people with knowledge either of the subject matter or of the parties. If you had no recordings, having a juror who walked the boundaries of the property 10 years earlier at the time of transfer is invaluable in a property dispute. Nothing has changed. If you have someone who ran with the defendant and knows all his secrets is OK to have on the jury. Why do doctors' wives have to be forced off in a medmal case. Her bias could go either way, and the risks cancel each other.

3) Only the first secret ballot represents a valid finding. Subsequent ballots represent the opinion of a big loudmouth bully and the desire of the rest to just go home. There should be one ballot, and a supermajority requirement reflecting the burden of proof certainty.

4) Stop the slavery. Pay people their standard daily earnings, up to some high maximum.

5) Stop the hobbling of the jury. Allow note taking. Allow questioning of witnesses by juries, for example, they may want to say to an expert, "Doctor, we have no idea what you mean. Could you rephrase your opinion in simpler language?" Or would lawyers prefer they keep that feeling to themselves?

6) Allow the strengths. They have the wisdom of the crowd. They have balance. Group think and pressure is where extreme views get polished, and become less extreme.

NYT Columnist: Restore Economic Growth or Threaten Pax Americana

Pax Americana is best for the entire world because of the soft, non-colonial nature of American policy. Many nations taking advantage of it have thrived. I recall an example. India and Pakistan massed troops at their border, and both made angry statements. The leader of India received a call from an American corporate head. War was not compatible with further investment by American industry. No war took place, and troops went home, this time.

In order to grow faster, the self-dealing lawyer profession must be crushed. It does not mean tort reform or limits on anti-scientific regulation. It means reducing the legal load by a half or more.

1) Judges who attack productive sectors of our economy should be arrested by federal marshals, tried for collaboration with the enemy, and executed for treason. The same goes for state attorney generals.

2) The economic burden of crime must be ended by executing all repeat violent offenders, until violent crime is reduced by 99%. Their protectors in the legal profession get arrested for treason, tried and executed.

3) The $trillion stolen by the lawyer lawyer profession must end, by shrinking the lawyer profession to a more appropriate 700,000 from 1.3 million. Do so by closing law schools, starting with the extreme left wing Top Tier, headed mostly by Hate America left wing extremists. Transfer that stolen loot to research and development, across the board. About 20% of our economy should consist of high end, innovative, brain work.


Op-Ed Columnist
Superbroke, Superfrugal, Superpower?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 4, 2010

In recent years, I have often said to European friends: So, you didn’t like a world of too much American power? See how you like a world of too little American power — because it is coming to a geopolitical theater near you. Yes, America has gone from being the supreme victor of World War II, with guns and butter for all, to one of two superpowers during the cold war, to the indispensable nation after winning the cold war, to “The Frugal Superpower” of today. Get used to it. That’s our new nickname. American pacifists need not worry any more about “wars of choice.” We’re not doing that again. We can’t afford to invade Grenada today.

Ever since the onset of the Great Recession of 2008, it has been clear that the nature of being a leader — political or corporate — was changing in America. During most of the post-World War II era, being a leader meant, on balance, giving things away to people. Today, and for the next decade at least, being a leader in America will mean, on balance, taking things away from people.

And there is simply no way that America’s leaders, as they have to take more things away from their own voters, are not going to look to save money on foreign policy and foreign wars. Foreign and defense policy is a lagging indicator. A lot of other things get cut first. But the cuts are coming — you can already hear the warnings from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. And a frugal American superpower is sure to have ripple effects around the globe.

“The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era” is actually the title of a very timely new book by my tutor and friend Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert. “In 2008,” Mandelbaum notes, “all forms of government-supplied pensions and health care (including Medicaid) constituted about 4 percent of total American output.” At present rates, and with the baby boomers soon starting to draw on Social Security and Medicare, by 2050 “they will account for a full 18 percent of everything the United States produces.”

Problems with Juries of Today

My problems with the jury are not solved by my verdicts.

1) No knowledge of complex technical and personal issues. Impossible to impart an engineering or police education in a few hours. Stop excluding those with knowledge.

2) No secrecy after the first ballot, and vulnerability to bullying, so everyone can go home.

3) The potential nullification of the nullification by just one loudmouth. Put a lawyer on the jury. He can move 11 other votes to reverse the self-evident verdict (done in real life, and described in private communication).

4) Physiologic measures of deception are banned by the Rules of Evidence (lie detector results). Yet, gut feelings of know nothing strangers about what is true are OK. This is cuckoo lawyer delusion.

5) Lawless taking of juror time without adequate compensation. Like shanghaiing sailors in a San Fran saloon in 1868. You fall through a trap door, someone hits you over the head. You wake up 100 miles out to sea on the way to China. And all you wanted was a drink (like all you wanted was to vote, and now your are on a target list).

6) Excusing from duty or excluding in voir dire all educated people. The selection should be completely randomized, and no one should be excused. That is necessary if the idea is to get a selection representing the general population. This makes the jurors grumpy, and biases them against the defendant, "But for your irresponsible, selfish, criminal conduct, I would not have to lose 2 weeks pay. Thanks a lot a-hole."
Judges should be put on the jury shanghai list.

7) Not allowed to take notes. Not allowed to ask questions in middle of trial, for example, "I didn't hear that. Can you, please, repeat it?"

In 1275 AD, the jury was a marvel of innovation and justice. It allowed people with knowledge. It permitted the wisdom of the crowd effect. It worked in bringing verdicts to where the mean of the population's ethics was, as opposed to eccentric bizarre, idiosyncratic feelings of judges. The lawyer hobbled and eliminated these positive features to better control the trial, a false charade designed to generate fees.

E-Discovery of Prosecutors and Judges by Innocent Defendants

I have advocated that the innocent defendant demand his defense attorney do total e-discovery on the prosecutor and on the judge. The first is to check for an improper motive. The judge's is to check for bias. The federal government may be the biggest subscriber to child porn sites. The prosecutor will say any is for work or research, but then that is what all the perps say.

"A cleavage-crazed criminal court judge - who fathered a son with a young Legal Aid lawyer - quit after officials found a massive porn stash on his work computer, sources said Thursday."

Delicious: Court Toilet off by an Inch,

Gotcha. What a way to defund all courts. Anyone feel unjustly treated in a divorce action, don't get a gun, get a tape measure.

Down The Toilet? Courthouse Restroom Repairs Cost Oconee County $1.1 Million
The building was cited for 93 violations of the Americans With Disabilites Act.
By Chris Cato
Published: July 23, 2010
Updated: July 23, 2010 - 12:16 PM
WALHALLA, S.C. --

Talk about flushing money down the toilet.

Violations of the Americans With Disabilites Act, most of those dealing with handicap access to restrooms, will cost Oconee County taxpayers more than a million dollars to repair.

Shortly after the county's new $8 million courthouse opened in 2003, the US Department of Justice slapped it with 93 violations of ADA requirements. County officials say the DOJ found the violations during a random inspection -- not as the result of any complaints by the disabled public.

"We still haven't had any complaints from the disabled," says Lake Julian, Oconee County's Director of Facilities Maintenance.

He says many of the violations seem "minor" and could be found at any public building in the country.

"But they are violations and we know we have to come into compliance," says Julian.

For instance, ADA requires toilets to measure 18 inches from the center of the bowl to the wall. Julian says several of the toilets in the courthouse measure 19 inches. Also, some of the stalls are four-feet wide, whereas ADA requires them to be five feet. And mirrors are 41 inches from the floor, whereas ADA requires 40 inches.

The mirrors are an easy fix. The toilets are not -- because they are mounted into the wall.

"If they were mounted in the floor like the one at your house, you could just put in an offset flange and slide it over one inch to be in compliance," says Julian. "But since it's mounted into the wall, all of the plumbing runs up through the wall."

Which means the entire wall will have to be torn out and all of the plumbing shifted over -- one inch.

Sex Offenders in Lawyer Neighborhoods

I live in a neighborhood where lawyers live. There were two sex offenders. One lives there, one works there.

I put in a neighborhood where lawyers work. There were 68 sex offenders.

Partner Sues Two Associates for Defamation in Report of Sexual Harassment

I would like to see all immunities end, including those of judges, legislator. If liability substitutes for violence, then immunity justifies violence.

Questions You Will Never Hear Asked of Prof. Kagan at her Hearing to Confirm Her to be on the Supreme Court

Do you consider it possible to read minds of impulsive, intoxicated people long after a crime?

What is the main purpose of the criminal law, indeed of government? Do you believe we are achieving that purpose?

You were dean of a top law school. Do you believe education or indoctrination was taking place at your school? Is it possible to make intelligent modern people believe in supernatural doctrines without indoctrination techniques?

If the words, intent, element, culpability and others could be shown to come from the Catholic Church catechism sections on mortal sin, would their use in a trial or any legal utterance violate the Establishment Clause? If these could not shown to exist in nature, but are fictitious, pretextual, church inventions, would that violate the Establishment Clause?

Are you aware of any data showing current methods, such as plea bargaining, trials, and jury verdicts have any validity or even any reliability (repeatability)?

After the first secret ballot of the jury, don't all subsequent votes reflect the views of the most domineering member, and the rest who want to go home?

Explain the justification for impeaching an experienced judge for looking into the facts of a case on his own.

Can you explain why crime rates are so low where the lawyer lives, and so high where the lawyer works? Can you explain why there are 20 million serious crimes a year, and 2 million prosecutions?

Do you pledge to edit your decisions to the sixth grade reading level?

Do you plan to continue to sign the death warrants of millions of viable babies in third term abortions, without parental consent?

Are you a homosexual, a lesbian? Do the tyrannical tendencies of such individuals affect their fitness to serve on the court for the next several decades?

If over 100,000 missing persons reports cannot be resolved each year, is it possible, the murder rate is really 70,000 and not 17,000?

Where is it you have trouble grasping, the deceased have a low recidivism rate, and those with life without parole have been granted absolute immunity for all crimes after the first murder.

Please, read out loud Article I Section 1 of our constitution. Does judicial review violate that section in any way?

Please, Do Not Call a Defendant Non-Violent Unless ...

Because most sentences result from plea bargaining, the original charge should be used to categorize the charge as violent or non-violent. Inherent in plea bargaining is the lessening of the charge for which the prosecutor has evidence.

Unless people are counting original charges and not the formal charges landing the defendant in prison, calling a prisoner non-violent is misleading.

Sexting Cannot be a Crime

Unless burning down one's house without an insurance claim is. Unless killing one self is. Unless crashing one's care on purpose is. Why the ACLU is taking a complex privacy approach, is a mystery, unless it is to generate lawyer jobs.

When a Lawyer Does the Right Thing, I Admit It, and Express Approval

The French always lead culture. They said, Communism was dead in 1984, it was only five years later. They taught the English lawyer inscrutable lawyer language as a tool of power and profit. They had an Enlightenment, we fulfilled it in our American Revolution. Let's hope this is a harbinger of greater resistance to the enemies of our civilization.

Lessons of the Mentally Ill in Jails

Prison is inpatient treatment. The pretty good management of the mentally ill, constituting a third of all beds of jails, proves something. Inpatient care can be adequately provided, as it is in most urban jails, for a tenth the cost of hospitalization. The gold plating of inpatient care is to appease oppressive but worthless lawyer driven requirements of accreditation and to prevent second guessing in medmal litigation.

Second, the fact that prohibition of restrictive procedures impairs prison officials less than health care setting officials results in great strides in the reduction of the suicide rate in jails, but not in hospitals.

http://www.ncianet.org/suicideprevention/publications/prisonsuicide.pdf

Some of the same methods can be applied to prison murders and rapes, to markedly reduce them by the same percentage.

Government Goons Intimidate Grandmas Singing God Bless America

That is the Left method. The facts abandoned the Left 100 years ago. All they have for persuasion is force. This has an effect of pre-chilling future speech for the elderly frail patriots. Their organization should seek an injunction to prevent police intimidation at the next rally.

Alternative Explanations for the Low Crime Rate

1) Sentencing guidelines adopted by the federal and state governments incapacitated a larger fraction of the male population. The number of downward deviations from guidelines has not grown much. The making of guidelines discretionary for judges took place 5 years ago. It usually takes 10 years for a law to have its full impact. This factor should be assessed in 5 more years.

2) Obesity.

3) Video Addiction.

4) Marijuana consumption.

5) More sex, at a younger age.

Trial May Violate the Establishment Clause and Other Clauses

The adversary system violates the Establishment Clause. It comes from the disputation method of reaching some answer in Scholasticism. OK in 1270 AD, out of the question as an investigatory method today.

1) Imagine a Koran based jurisprudence. I read their hornbook. 90% of it is pretty good. Still, it would be appalling and unlawful to have legal procedures taken from there. There is a lot of church in the court, the architecture, the robes, the gavel, the high bench, the oaths, the standing upon judge entering the room, the pews, the stentorian tones, the high ceilings, the dressing up as if going to church on Sunday.

2) They got an answer, alright, but 100% of the time, it was incorrect by today's standards. There are no validity statistics to support this bonehead method. There are not even reliability (repeatability) statistics to support it.

3) Twelve strangers, using their gut feelings to detect the truth, will detect only likability, of the defendant, the witnesses, the lawyers, the judge's expressions of preference.

4) Rarity. Because over 95% of cases are settled by an agreement, the trial is a privilege of the rich. The trial, in practice, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment for everyone coerced into a plea agreement.

5) To avoid the expense of a trial, the prosecution will use progressively coercive and intimidating tactics to get a plea agreement, even one completely unrelated to the original charge. Such coercion violates the presumption of innocence and subjects the defendant to extra-judicial punishment.

6) The person with the most experience in the court is the judge. He is prohibited from investigating for himself. Should he drive to the scene of the crime, just to get an idea, he will be impeached. This is so the lawyer gets its trial billing. The trial is therefore to generate income, not to arrive at any truth. The argument against inquisitorial judges is that they are biased in favor of the prosecution. They will relate better to police of their race, age, and sex. If evidence of such bias can be found, the judge should be impeached.

7) The jury brings the wisdom of the crowd. This benefit is completely negated by 1) excluding any juror with knowledge; 2) allowing open voting and debate after the first secret ballot, all subsequent votes reflecting the decision of the juror who is loudest, and the rest wanting only to go home. There should be only one secret jury vote.

Foresseability Reconsidered, but Distinguished Professor Remains Clueless

Speaking of David Owen, Carolina Distinguished Professor of Law, University of South Carolina School of Law. Most tort law professors are biased in favor of the plaintiff side, where they are supposed to be neutral source of learning for their students. Most tort law textbooks read like Mein Kampfs for the plaintiff bar.

I understand, foreseeability was an attempt to limit defendant liability, since a type of strict liability existed prior to its introduction. Problems.

1) Foreseeability has its origin in Scholasticism. It is a power of God to foresee the future and to be able to change it. It is a supernatural power and any mention of it in a legal utterance violates the Establishment Clause. Not even the Medieval Church believed, man could foresee accidents, only the modern lawyer.

2) The foreseeability of future accidents or injuries is like that of the winning lottery ticket in the Pick 5. If the professor believes defendants should foresee rare accidents, then he should provide the winning lottery numbers for tonight. He is more likely to get those correct than to foresee a car crash in the most dangerous intersection in the nation. I can foresee the sun will rise in the East because it has done so a million times before, without exception, meeting this criterion of being more frequent than 51% of the time. I can foresee that more than 50% of people who jump from the fourth floor will because that has happened in the past and has great repeatability.

3) The burden of proof in torts is to reach the preponderance of the evidence, namely 51% likely to be correct. It is impossible to meet that burden if the chance of having the accident is not above 51% likelihood. So if it can be shown that, under the same conditions, an accident will take place 50% of the time, but less than 51% if the time, the burden of proof is impossible to meet.

If Torts Replace Violence, Does Immunity Morally and Intellectually Justify Violence?

A criminal defendant was falsely convicted and sued the prosecutor for withholding exculpatory evidence. He admitted the immunity of prosecutors. However, he charged the supervisors negligently trained the prosecutors, an administrative function, no part of the duties of an officer of the court.

In an unanimous decision, the Supreme Court held training was all part of the acts of the office, and rejected any liability. Prosecutors therefore have absolute immunity.

This is an appalling injustice. These are absolutely incompetent government slackers who need liability to motivate an improvement in what they do. They fail to prosecute the overwhelming majority of crimes. When they decide to prosecute, there is an unknown but large fraction of innocence. If the prosecutor embarrasses the office, he is an at will employee. He will likely lose his job after a suitable face saving interval.

So this is the question. If torts liability replaces violence, does immunity morally and intellectually justify violence?

Answering Mike Farrell and the Extreme Death Penalty Abolitonist

Dissent gets zero tolerance on that blog. They will not post any comment even asking questions of the blogger. That is because the facts abandoned the left 100 years ago.

Only incapacitation justifies the death penalty. Farrell needs to come here to hear the problems with LWOP.

1) License to kill. All crime after the first murder have absolute immunity. The license is far superior to that of James Bond, always second guessed by politicians.

2) Dose-Response Curve. You cannot obstruct a treatment then claim it does not work.

3) Transportation. It kill three orders of magnitude more innocent people than the death penalty. By the abolitionist logic, all transportation should stop, including being a pedestrian which kills 2 orders of magnitude more innocents than the death penalty.

4) Illegality of deterrence. One may not punish a defendant for the speculative future crimes of unknown parties. That violates procedural due process rights to notice and to a fair hearing.

5) Punishment is a waste of time and expense. These folks have shown themselves to be incapable of learning from their beatings, their arrests, their accidents. Furthermore, punishment may come from the Bible, and violate the Establishment Clause.

6) Cruelty of LWOP and of the average death. Let prisoners choose to accurately assess which remedy is crueler. Most innocent people (90%) will have a rough, prolonged, agonizing, humiliating filled with painful but pointless medical procedures. The latter are caused by the threats of lawyers to sue the doctor who refuses to do them. Thank the lawyer for the painful death without dignity that awaits most of us. Why is the murderer entitled to get a perfectly painless version? Thank the rent seeking lawyer, again.

Targeted Killing Debate

The lawyer has granted national leaders immunity. It is OK to drop bombs on peasant weddings, perhaps by horrible mistake. However, it is unlawful to assassinate a leader seeking the eradication of one's nation. According to these collaborators, the killing of 7 million Germans is lawful, but the attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler would be unlawful if done when he was visiting Italy. It would infringe on the "sovereignty" of Italy.

Facebook Loving Criticism of Teacher is Protected Speech

The lawyer expert toward the bottom of the story says, threats are a different story.

Here is an analysis of a call to kill a Supreme Court Justice by Ann Coulter. It concludes that Supreme Court decisions require an imminence and physical likelihood before such threats can be prosecuted or even be considered unethical.

http://www.legalethicsforum.com/blog/2006/02/what_can_and_sh.html

That analysis applies to criminal prosecution and lawyer discipline. Whether it applies to school discipline is not clear. The Court wants to defer to educational authorities to maintain school discipline.

Federal Regulators Must Pay Legal Costs After Dismissal of Claim

Innocent defendants should use this case as a guide to deterring the federal government.

""The EEOC has presented the court with anecdotal evidence to show that some members of CRST's management occasionally violated CRST's anti-sexual harassment policy by failing to respond appropriately to sexual harassment in the workplace," wrote the judge in April. "However, the EEOC has not compiled the failings of CRST's managers in any meaningful way to show that CRST has a pattern or practice of tolerating sexual harassment in its workplace."

That was a "big finding," said Mathias. "Once the pattern and practice allegation was gone, you had 200 or so claims with nothing in common, no unifying characteristic."

The EEOC's argument, said Reade, "boils down to little more than bald assertions." The EEOC's litigation strategy, she added, "was untenable: CRST faced a continuously moving target of allegedly aggrieved persons, the risk of never-ending discovery and indefinite continuance of trial."

In an order last August, Reade dismissed the remaining claims of 67 women after finding the agency had "wholly abandoned its statutory duties" towards them by not conducting any investigation of their allegations.

In the fee application, Jenner said its attorneys and staff billed a total of 18,005.75 hours on the case and sought $7,121,569.25 at rates ranging from $151 to $825 per hour for this work. Simmons attorneys and support staff billed a total of 2,507.66 hours at rates ranging from $95 to $295 per hour and sought a total of $502,977.02 for their work.

Reade on Feb. 9 said several factors warranted a large award: The company's counsel successfully obtained a dismissal of the entire case; the case involved hundreds of allegedly aggrieved individuals and there was potentially massive liability to CRST.

She awarded the amount requested by Simmons for its work, but reduced Jenner's request to $3,501,394.63 after comparing the firm's rates to market rates prevailing in the local community. She also awarded reasonable out-of-pocket expenses totaling $463,071.25. In an earlier order, the court had granted CRST $92, 842.21 in costs."

Consider a Cross Claim Against the APA in any Mental Disability Claim

There is a duty among guideline makers to do no harm. If a set of diagnostic criteria is weak scientifically, and a lawsuit against an employer is filed, consider a cross claim against the negligent guideline maker, the APA.

1) This threat would make the APA more conservative in the sense of greater proof of validity for any new diagnosis.

2) It would deter the frivolous expansion of psychiatric diagnosis into normal but bad for you behavior. These no only stigmatize normal conduct unduly, it destroys the credibility of heavy duty, dangerous, psychiatric disorders.

3) Whatever the assets of the APA, they are dwarfed by the endowments of the parent universities employing the members of the DSM V committee.

Reasonable Stopping Distance and the Lawyer Dumbass

Traffic laws affect the entire population several hours a day. They have the most impact of any law subject. This is true even if one is walking. So, naturally, rules of the road are never covered in the core law school curriculum, and it is hard to find an elective offered.

Dumbass, here, is a lawyer term of art. It refers to someone with an IQ of 300, who enters law school, and emerges a mental cripple, from the criminal cult indoctrination that took place.

Simple example in traffic law. The reasonable stopping distance is always said to be a car length per 10 mph. That is true. Typical stopping distance from 60 MPH is about 120 feet, and one may assume the average American car used to be 20 feet long. However, this stop is from 60 mph to 0 mph.

In traffic, the car ahead may be traveling at 55 MPH, the car behind at 60 mph. The speed difference is 5 mph. It is not 60 MPH as it is with the full stop test of braking distance. The reasonable stopping distance required to prevent a collision is therefore roughly half a car length, or 10 feet. If it takes 45 feet to slow down from 60 to 55 mph, then the car ahead has traveled 40 feet. The real distance to avoid a collision is 5 to 10 feet.

The 6 car lengths are required to come to a full stop. Doing so in the passing lane of a highway is not just careless, reckless, and irresponsible. It is insane. One will be killed. Furthermore, the trucker trying to avoid a stopped car in the left lane will likely do something that will injure himself and many others driving around his truck.

The lawyer dumbass forgot something here, common sense. I have not been able to find this defense in a case of tailgating, aggressive driving, or careless driving.

Mother Country Has a Drop in Crime Rate

Whatever the causes, they are unknown, and cross national. I think we are talking about video and computer addiction, obesity epidemic, feminist, PC education.

Here .

"There was an unexpected 8% drop in crime recorded by the police in the 12 months to September with falls in burglary, robbery and violence despite the recession, according to the quarterly crime figures (pdf) published this morning.

The Home Office data also confirms that the murder rate in England and Wales has fallen (pdf) to a 20-year low, with 651 homicides in 2008/09 – 102 fewer than the previous year.

The latest British Crime Survey, based on people's experience of crime, also published today, shows that crime was broadly stable over the 12 months to September 2009 in England and Wales. However, it reports that the risk of becoming a victim of crime has fallen to a new historical low of 22%."

Neither Deterrence nor False Convictions are Valid Arguments For or Against the Death Penalty

The rate of innocence is not an argument against the death penalty. Anyone using it that way must stop using any form of transportation until the problem of accidental deaths in crashes has been "solved." We need a moratorium on cars, trucks, planes, subways, bicycling and walking. These kill 1000 times as many people as the death penalty, and 5000 times as many innocent people as the death penalty. These crashes kill 40,000 people who have committed no crime, without procedural due process, without trial. They made the mistake of driving over black ice. They are dispatched by crushing and slicing by metal edges emerging during the crash. There were over 10 times as many children executed by by vehicles, as they walked, as there were death penalties carried out.

No. The rate of innocence is being used as a pretext to abolish the death penalty. The abolitionists will use the slightest mistake or imperfection to try to shit the death penalty down. Therefore the use of the rate of innocence represents a form of bad faith. Bad faith gives moral justification to invalidate the advocate.

The rate of innocence does justify something else. Tort liability of the judge, and of the prosecutor to the defendant. If jury misconduct took place and it was not immediately reported openly, the jury should have tort liability. Let each of these careless parties carry liability insurance to cover their carelessness.

*****

In the deterrence argument, one executes one person to scare another, and to prevent that unknown other from murdering an unknown victim. It is unclear if the typical murderer calculates the odds of getting caught, of being found guilty, and of undergoing the death penalty. It is unknown, if the death penalty can have such an effect. The death penalty has been blocked and is too rare to generate the statistical power needed to answer the question of deterrence. See the discussion on the dose-response curve.

Assume, powerful deterrence. For example, every execution saves 10 murder victims. Executing the person to have an effect on another violates the procedural due process right of the defendant to a fair hearing. His life is being taken to benefit someone completely unrelated to the crime.