>:(

[athenaltena]

Dear stupid in my law class,

The two words you do not want to say while arguing case law is "I feel". Just... no. If I were the judge I would have tossed you out the door and told you go back to law school. Back it up with facts or get out.

No Love,
Me

Comments

[isleodreams]

Ahh . . . but feelings are the basis for gastronomic jurisprudence whereby the judge decides how he feels about the parties to a particular case and then cherry picks rules of law to justify his decision.

[athenaltena]

That's unfortunately how it works in practice, bit in theory it shouldn't work like that. I actually just did a brief on Justice Stevens railing against laws that give prosecutors more freedom to appeal to the juror's emotions instead of presenting evidence, and I agree with Stevens that this is a bad thing.

[eryndil]

I agree...unless the law is wrong in the first place.

[night_princess]

There should be good reasons for why a law is wrong beyond just the jurors' feelings. I think people need to be especially vigilant about that right after a lawyer has worked the jurors over emotionally.