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| Matters of Law - Law v. Common Sense and Justice?
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H2Ogerl's attempt to stump the chump (from the forum post)!
[QUOTE=H20gerl;113461]So....what creates the greatest conflict between common sense, morals, justice, law as applicable and what is just plain old the right thing to do? What quandaries have you been most challenged or at odds because of?[/QUOTE]
Let me start with the good news. Juries -- the twelve members of the community who give their time to hear people's disputes and do their best to apply the law to the evidence -- make sure that common sense, morals, and justice, and even what is just the plain old right thing to do, are always the touchstones for litigation. Because juries will want to know who the good guys are so that they can process the information they hear through the evidence at trial, a lawyer giving business risk advice will properly consider not only what the client's legal rights are, but what the story might look like to a jury.
There is a trend away from jury trials that should be more troubling to the broader community than it appears to be. The legal community is only starting to realize that removing juries from the resolution of disputes disconnects the legal industry from real people, making it increasingly irrelevant to real people. The broader community has acquiesced in the trend, probably because no one really likes jury duty, and because the cause-effect relationship is not obvious. But a jury's verdict is the community's verdict, its last bulwark to make sure that the legal does not trample the just. When disputes are decided in private by arbitration, the community loses its voice.
I have written a whole article impugning arbitration, so I won't punish anyone with it here. But that is my answer: the trend away from juries is the most troubling quandary I have faced in my years of practicing law.
Odyssey
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Posted by LawOdyssey on 2008-07-10 19:12:36 | Rating: | Views: 42
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