Politics, Pyrotechnics, and Purim 1986

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:29:45 -0500, "W. E. Fred Wallace"

Well, this "do what you gotta do" approach to law can be extended, can't it? So then the practice of law, as you are suggesting, simply becomes a game where the strongest wins. Hardly a good situation. How would you like to go up against a big insurer, win, win, win, only to find that your winning lawyer is take away from you? Would that bolster your faith in the practice of law?

The very ideal of law enforcement officials having to play by the rules derives from the concept that they could otherwise become the very same bullies and gangsters that they claim to be pursuing. Your suggestion leads us down the path to where the law enforcement officials should be able to do "whatever it takes", to bring a criminal to justice. Unfortunately "whatever it takes" would include torture, various types of lawbreaking, and generally just acting the same as the thugs they are in pursuit of.

Doing that, allowing that to happen, would seriously undermine the public's faith that the courts could provide acceptable outcomes. Aggrieved parties would be, thereby, encouraged to consider alternatives to the court system for the settlement of grievances. Don't we have enough trouble with that sort of thing now? If so, would it really be wise to further encourage it? We know that the legal system isn't perfect, but as long as we can credibly believe that work is being done to make things better, more people are encouraged to stay within the system. While, making the system weaker in those respects, only encourages public frustration.

Obviously getting rid of Bruce Cutler was an expeditious thing for the gov't to do in the short term, it really costs us too much, in the longer term to make it really worthwhile. And one must keep in mind at the same time that the law make it known that their practice is very much about setting examples. In that vein, you can probably understand that it would have been much better to see one gangster go free, thus preserving important principles of law and setting the important example it does, than to simply get the guy by violating the rules of fairness so wantonly.

The costs of having done that set the waves of cynicism in motion throughout society and those costs result in more irrational behavior. It's like having the court tell everyone "the rule were made to be broken". If so, then the next question that come to mind is; "then why bother to have rules at all?" If they are only for the powerless, then they aren't really rules. At least not in a Consbreastutional sense!