In general I think Lawyer-brain (not all lawyers, etc) is behind a lot of left/liberal dysfunction right now: too much focus on process and not enough on actual outcomes. In everything from housing to energy policy to the survival of rule of law.
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Can you point me to something good that's been written about lawyer-brain, because I think it goes beyond the focus on process. For me, it has a lot to do with what counts as evidence, and a poorly understood interpretation of a "reasonable doubt."
Yeah in my experience this is also a problem in union organizing because a lot of workers have law brain, expect the process to work and don't really want to organize or take action themselves.
it just does not compute to people like this that a) the law is and always will be Political and b) the merits of this case mattered much, much less than ramming it through by any means necessary
As a lawyer, I’m embarrassed by how “the best and brightest” legal minds of my generation cannot or will not understand that law is derived from politics, and constitutional law engages politics at the most fundamental level.
And this is how it should be. In a democratic system, laws that violate fundamental political values (ie constitutional provisions and the norms and values undergirding them) are illegitimate. This applies to SCOTUS decisions as well.
The right simultaneously ignores established law and also legislates effectively through the courts so my question is why does the left play by a different set of rules and assumptions? Adjust to your opponent and the realities presented
It’s not just that. There’s also an electoral piece to this. Lack of urgency & process focused governance is a loser electorally. Nobody wants a Chuck Schumer (or Merrick Garland) presidency. i.e.:
1. How important could it be if they were so slow.
2. It went nowhere & looked feckless.
The message to legislators and officials from the moment Biden took office should have been "Trump will not be permitted to run for office again. End of story. If you'd like to help us do that through easy, conventional means, fantastic, we'd like that. But we'll do it without you if we have to."
It's more than just a problem on the left, but the right wing version is to ignore settled law in the favor of being That Guy rules lawyering to the DM, except instead of the DM it's the American people and instead of the PHB it's US legal codes.
This is correct. It’s also why the Democratic Party is losing an appeal with working class voters. Yes, racism is real. But look at how Trump governs, signing executive orders ins stadium. It’s entertainment. A lawyer would never…
Not to mention that Republican lawyers are just doing unconstitutional/illegal shit and forcing the left to respond when it could easily be the other way around
Good processes get good results. The process is broken. And people with nefarious intent have abused both broken processes and co-opted tooling to subvert democracy.
Yes, the fundamental problem is the corruption of our political process, which has been in large part fueled by the Court’s absurd first amendment/campaign finance decisions. But layer-brain is real - probably an aspect of the same neoliberal process that has corrupted our political/legal system.
It's really specifically elite lawyer brain, which has more to do with the existence of incestuous and cloistered elites than the legal training part of it.
yeah, look, i would rather dozens of great things shoved through haphazardly by a bunch of comparative amateurs hoping that some of it sticks instead of spending years trying to perfect a couple things by procedure
One theory of the present moment I keep coming back to is 'too many millennials went to law school after 2008 and inadvertently indoctrinated themselves into modes of political action that were at total cross purposes with their notional goals.'
It definitely felt going into the first Obama administration that establishment liberals in the law and especially law professors thought we had "returned to sanity" and were teaching that way. eg a big interest for me then was IP and the public domain which proved the least important issue ever
There’s a certain type of person who understands a complex system well enough to tell you why none of your ideas are good. Large organizations seem structurally to favor this kind of person.
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Ginsburg was great! She deserves to be lauded. But don’t get so fixated on powerful rhetoric that you forget about *actual power*.
i quit law because it was so disheartening, but now even the small victories are wiped out.
i’m becoming a nihilist in spite of myself and i don’t care for it.
It's all lawyers. Some of us are just trying our best to not be scum about it.
1. How important could it be if they were so slow.
2. It went nowhere & looked feckless.
"Who cares what the media says when we have the facts on our side?"
Democrats need to get it into their heads - there is no electorally viable Mitt Romney constituency. He lost, HW lost, and Trump won twice.
https://bsky.app/profile/adamthorn.bsky.social/post/3ks3did4dqc2t
The perfect process will please everyone!