By An Old Friend
Sun, Sep 20, 2020 12:41 a.m.
[brief] Interesting Comment from a Commenter and Response from Mark Steyn ...
... at Steyn's website:
Paul Harmon • Sep 19, 2020 at 13:27
And while we are on the subject... why should a law degree be necessary to be a Judge of any stripe?
Lawyers are hired guns. Their whole purpose and training is to find cracks and crannies in the law (and, of course, holy "precedent") to allow their paying client to get away with whatever nefarious act he committed. Barristers have long been recognized as people of no moral character at all, people who influence judges by any means possible.
Judges, on the other hand, are supposed to be citizens highly respected for moral character, intelligence, fairness, and (most importantly) incorruptibility. On all counts, except perhaps intelligence, lawyers are hopeless.
I admit that I have a chip on my shoulder about this. My father was the last non-lawyer judge in the state of Washington, and that fact has long made me thoughtful about the issue. Lawyers do not have a lock on intelligence, and many other professions (such as engineering and medicine) provide better backgrounds for incorruptibility and fairness.
Mark replies:
No argument there, Paul. I have been before a couple of local judges in recent years - one was a high-school driver's ed instructor and was perfectly competent; the other was the usual promoted lawyer, and was most unimpressive. I beat the rap in both cases, but, a year or two on, the latter was obliged to step down for shoplifting.
A quote from John Derbyshire is interesting in this context:
As I have explained many times to foreign friends, since it was explained to me by a learned man when I first came to this country, the justices of SCOTUS are not very exceptional persons. They are not even very exceptional lawyers.
2 comments:
To further prover the point, if you were to ask any 20 of the Leftists assembling on the steps of the Supreme Court - singing, chanting, crying, leaving piles of flowers (and soon rioting in the streets) - is they had ever read even a snippet of any decision/ruling she had ever written, I guarantee you that you will get blank stares.
Perhaps after being humiliated this way, they may desperately search for any of the Twitter 'bards' opining everywhere (on matters they know also know nothing about) for some help, and get a few talking points.
But otherwise, all this 'heartfelt sorrow' at the 'Notorious RBG's passing is a lot of BS.
I remember reading that in no place does the Constitution require a Supreme Court justice to be a lawyer and it was suggested that a philosopher might be a better choice. Maybe a really good historian would be good--he or she might better understand how laws affect countries. I also think it is a terrible thing that most legislators are lawyers--they have no interest in making the mess of laws simpler and more understandable--the more complex they are the more you need to hire a ridiculously expensive lawyer. Someone wrote that there are so many laws now that it is impossible for any one man to tell you what you can legally do or not do. Of course a morass of laws also favors statists--probably everyone is violating some law or other so if you are out of favor with the powers that be, a prosecutor can always find something to get you with--something various people associated with Trump have found out.
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