Why do psychologists ever worry about finding laws of nature for the mind? Isn't it kind of like looking for laws of computer output or laws of car behaviour?
Maybe more interestingly, why are laws possible in physics? Ie. what kind of thing is the physical universe, such that it is possible to discover laws about it?
Friday, March 26, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Justice isn't for sale or Why are all lawyers not publically funded?
I've been on hiatus due to workload, and I am unlikely to be on anything like a regular posting schedule for a while. Nevertheless, I will try to post what I think might be particularly juicy ideas when they occur.
We've all heard about and been outraged by the cases where people accused of crimes buy their innocence through high-powered lawyers. OJ Simpson is probably the most notorious of these examples (and the one that got me thinking of this topic), but I'm sure there are countless lower profile cases (lawyer friends, help me out here?). And really, the point of this post is just to ask: Why do we allow this to happen? Why have we explicitly set up our legal system in such a way that people with more money are more likely to go free? Isn't justice supposed to be blind?
What I'm suggesting is simply that every attorney be a public attorney. From a moral perspective, do we not want the rich and the poor to have the same standing in the eyes of the law, when they are on trial for the same crime? I don't know if the proposal makes sense for non-criminal cases, but I can't immediately think why it wouldn't. Again, my knowledge of the law is lacking, so if someone has a good reason, let me know in the comments. I feel like I should say more in favor of my argument here, but I just can't find anything to say. The point seems to me to be extremely straightforward. So far, I can find absolutely no moral rationale for the system we currently have.
But perhaps there is an economic rationale. One objection I can see to this idea is that somebody's going to have to pay for it, and that probably means higher taxes for someone. One reasonable part of this objection is that if the tax is at a flat rate, it will be regressive, with lower income people paying disproportionately for a service they currently get for free (assuming low income people are already forced to rely on the public defender system, and would get nothing in return for paying the tax). However, there is really no reason for the tax to be flat. We already tax income progressively in just about every developed country in the world. In this case, a progressive tax seems even fairer than usual, since high income people are the ones who will be using the new extension of the service the most (again, presumably low income people were already relying on public attorneys). Of course, some of them might object -- they would no longer have the advantage of having better attorneys than the other guy. Highly paid attorneys might object too -- presumably, their salaries will go down. But aren't these things sort-of the point?
Think of the social outcome. No more teams of corporate lawyers being able to screw individuals who don't have the means to fight back (as in the RIAA lawsuits, or GMO companies suing farmers who end up with wind-blown GMO crop on their land). If a corporation has a grievance they can use a public prosecution system, just like any grievance anyone else has. No more OJ Simpson-type criminal cases. I'd be curious to hear if anyone sees a downside.
We've all heard about and been outraged by the cases where people accused of crimes buy their innocence through high-powered lawyers. OJ Simpson is probably the most notorious of these examples (and the one that got me thinking of this topic), but I'm sure there are countless lower profile cases (lawyer friends, help me out here?). And really, the point of this post is just to ask: Why do we allow this to happen? Why have we explicitly set up our legal system in such a way that people with more money are more likely to go free? Isn't justice supposed to be blind?
What I'm suggesting is simply that every attorney be a public attorney. From a moral perspective, do we not want the rich and the poor to have the same standing in the eyes of the law, when they are on trial for the same crime? I don't know if the proposal makes sense for non-criminal cases, but I can't immediately think why it wouldn't. Again, my knowledge of the law is lacking, so if someone has a good reason, let me know in the comments. I feel like I should say more in favor of my argument here, but I just can't find anything to say. The point seems to me to be extremely straightforward. So far, I can find absolutely no moral rationale for the system we currently have.
But perhaps there is an economic rationale. One objection I can see to this idea is that somebody's going to have to pay for it, and that probably means higher taxes for someone. One reasonable part of this objection is that if the tax is at a flat rate, it will be regressive, with lower income people paying disproportionately for a service they currently get for free (assuming low income people are already forced to rely on the public defender system, and would get nothing in return for paying the tax). However, there is really no reason for the tax to be flat. We already tax income progressively in just about every developed country in the world. In this case, a progressive tax seems even fairer than usual, since high income people are the ones who will be using the new extension of the service the most (again, presumably low income people were already relying on public attorneys). Of course, some of them might object -- they would no longer have the advantage of having better attorneys than the other guy. Highly paid attorneys might object too -- presumably, their salaries will go down. But aren't these things sort-of the point?
Think of the social outcome. No more teams of corporate lawyers being able to screw individuals who don't have the means to fight back (as in the RIAA lawsuits, or GMO companies suing farmers who end up with wind-blown GMO crop on their land). If a corporation has a grievance they can use a public prosecution system, just like any grievance anyone else has. No more OJ Simpson-type criminal cases. I'd be curious to hear if anyone sees a downside.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
