I try not to get involved in the blog wars, but something has been bugging me. The worst offenders on the conservative side at the shitty logic, hyperbolic arguments, sloppy thinking and general innumeracy -- Instapundit, Ann Althouse, the Powerline guys -- are all lawyers or more specifically law professors. Whenever I get into a Comments spat with somebody who's just quote-farming and spitting circular arguments -- almost always the "I'm a lawyer" or "law professor" comes up.
I mean, is it in the nature of the profession, the training in constructing arguments to serve a purpose rather than discern a truth (oo, I can feel the flame war coming from that one), is it just that lawyers have more spare time, or are there just so many damn lawyers in the world that statistically, some asshat on the web is going to wind up being one?
46 comments:
Well, I think your point about what the Greeks called Sophistry is well taken (and my father, whom I love and respect and like, is a lawyer). When your job involves winning arguments rather than discovering truth, you become really shitty yet successful at arguing.
It may also be that a really good lawyer can argue his client's side, regardless of his beliefs whereas the more hackish have to be able to alter their beliefs on the spot so that they can argue from a (in *their* minds) defensible position.
It may simply be that those wingnuts are relying on the presumed authority of the "I'm a law professor" claim to intimidate others because their arguments are so weak. There may be lots of other progressive--or at least intelligent--commenters who don't feel the need to wave their credentials like a flag. (And I'm a law librarian, so there.)
I'm a law student, and it is very true that we are taught to take a position and really spin the facts to our client's positions.
For instance we took the story of Goldylocks and the Three Bears, and wrote it from three positions. ProBears, ProGoldylocks, and objective. While still not knowingly lying(saying something that is known at the time deliberately false) a good lawyer can focus in on, selectively ignore and or explain away details to such a degree that they come out as completely different stories.
It can be hard even for me with my limited time with the law to seperate out "taking a position" vs honestly discussing something. Alot of times I have to stop myself and wonder if I honestly belief what I am saying or have I convinced myself into taking a position to the point where I believe it. Imagine how hard it is for someone with 10-20 years experience in the law. Especially a law professor who teaches the same kinds of subject answering basically the same kinds of questions over and over again during that period.
Maybe times are changing, but time was you could always tell who was actually a lawyer on the net because they were the ones who, despite being suspiciously well-informed about certain things, studiously avoided ever stating their profession. Something about trouble that could ensue if their online musings were mistaken for professional legal opinions.
Corollary to this principle: Why, yes, there are certainly a large number of people who claim to be lawyers online.
I have a friend with a degree in rhetoric. He's also a conservative republican. He can almost always "win" an argument with me -- but, as I pointed out to him, that doesn't make him "right."
In my experience, there are few people more inclined to expound at length on things they know little about than law professors. It seems to be a hazard of the profession.
Some people can be good (or at least passable) at a certain intellectual specialty without ever developing the skills to reason well outside that specialty. This problem can be compounded when they're in a socially "elite" profession and can thus expect to have an attentive audience for their opinions, no matter how ridiculous they may be.
Think of it from the other direction: if you were trying to create a successful wingnut blogger, whom would you recruit?
You need someone who reads quickly and is comfortable with prose; who writes well; who enjoys arguments and will take extreme measures to win them, but doesn't particularly care about truth; who adopts or defends racist and sexist rhetoric without risk to his or her career. You need an embittered misanthrope, living a sheltered life, who doesn't have anything better to do than run a wingnut blog.
Law professors -- literate, argumentative, tenured, and underpaid -- are obviously a good target demographic.
I'm a lawyer, and I don't think it's the bit about being trained to make an arbitrary argument.
I think people who go into law tend to be pre-disposed to taking an aggressive stance intellectually. In other words, they're strongly opinionated, and when it's an opinion you don't like, that's intensely annoying.
Go read something like the Balkinization blog, or TalkLeft, or Glenn Greenwald, and tell me if you find them just as annoying. If not, it must be something more than mere lawyerhood.
The idea that lawyer bloggers make tendentious arguments because they're trained to argue on behalf of their clients, whether they agree with them or not, overlooks an important point: Lawyer bloggers, in general, are not blogging on behalf of a client. They're expressing their own personal opinions. Lawyers, and especially law professors, can have very strongly-held, unwavering personal opinions, just like anyone else.
Another thing to keep in mind is that legal writing is normally a very detailed and painstaking process, with numerous stages of research, fact-checking, revisions, proofreading, citation checking, and so forth. In the rapid-fire world of the blogosphere, then, lawyers are arguably at something of a disadvantage, since they cannot use one of their biggest skills: the ability to spend lots of time generating an ironclad argument.
So, gaijin_biker, they're a little out of shape when it comes to real-time debate? That could be. Throw a script actor into an improv skit show, and you might see a bit of fumbling there too.
My question is, is there any correlation between what kind of law they study and how good their arguments are? What about defense vs. prosecution vs. research? It's hard to determine whether personal politics determine one's area of expertise or vice versa, but I'm curious about whether there are trends there.
I'm thinking of Michael Froomkin, for one, who's a law professor at U. of Miami. Granted, someone who's versed in the internet law aspects of free speech may be more likely to be progressive (like most techies), but he does his research, argues rationally, and asks more questions than he answers. It's a sign that at least some law profs can handle the pace and format of a blog.
Good point, alison. Another fact to bear in mind is that lawyers and law professors, while they may be quite intelligent, are usually only truly expert in a very narrow field of study. Copyright law, for example, or tax law, or criminal law, or even subsets of these fields.
Of course, they also presumably have a good understanding of general matters like how statutes are interpreted, how the legal system works, how rights and duties interact, and so forth, all of which can certainly help in debating policy issues.
But ultimately, taken out of their element, lawyers are just smart people with a talent for thinking logically. And so are many other people who never went to law school.
I'm married to a lawyer and though I love my husband I fucking hate lawyers - they stink of rhetoric and bull shit and never say thank you after dinner.
Hey. I *always* say thank you after dinner.
Froomkin is good, but there are legions of other lawyers and law professors who represent different points of view than the hacks to whom you refer. Try these:
href="http://continental-op.blogspot.com/">Reports from Poisonville
href="http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/">Unclaimed Territory – Glenn Greenwald
href="http://www.isthatlegal.org/">Is that Legal? (Eric Muller)
href="http://www.ernietheattorney.net/">Ernie the Attorney
href="http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/">Sivacracy.net
And please be careful of dismissing lawyers as Sophists. The Sophists might have had it right: Man is the measure of all things. It's the Platonists, the Essentialists, the people who believe there's something more clear than a better argument that are the real trouble.
Peter's got a point. The problem with Instapundit, Althouse and the boys at Powerline is they don't think they need to make an argument. Their truths, it appears, are self-evident. This is not a problem specific to lawyers, though. It's a problem with true believers.
To continue the generalization, why is it that a discernable portion of the blog voices on the Left have a background in economics?
Well, first off, I'm a lawyer (har, though it's true) and the thing about those whom you mention is that if they argue in their vocations as well as they do in their avocations...they suck as lawyers.
Citing a case and only adding "heh, indeedy. Read the whole thing" is simply going to piss off the judge and (dirty little secret) more importantly, his/her law clerks who have to read the garbage.
Similarly, whining about meanness and ickiness, a la frau Altmouse tends to draw a response along the lines of "suck it up. This league is full contact, professor.
As for the powerline guys, they're just idiots who I would love to have cases against
I was a litigator for 10 years and I hate fucking lawyers. As a group, they were the most dishonest people I have ever met. Sophistry is an honourable pursuit given a bad name by anti-Jesuit propaganda. But it does get to the point where lawyers have no ground left to stand on, and they resort to running through the maze of procedure to avoid responsibility.
I am regularly reminded by people that my arguments leave no room for others' opinions. So what? It's what lawyers do, and I'm winning and it's a rush. But always being in the right is just impolite. And who cares about law professors? Litigators laugh at them.
As I learned in Republican campaign school when I snuck in, they could give a fig about being right. It's all about winning to them.
Couldn't agree more, you're absolutely spot on.
Cakreiz, Esq.
My girlfriend is lawyer so I always wonder if arguing for it's own sake is part of be a lawyer or part of being a girlfriend.
Plus, there's a reason the "Trust me, I'm a lawyer" shirts were funny.
It's its.
I'm currently in law school and I believe it starts here. If you want to figure out why many lawyers are jaded and weird, sit in a law school class and listen to their endless hypotheticals and pointless arguments. We're trained to not ever come up with a real answer for anything although we evaluate both side extensively. This leaves us alone and incompatible with the real world.
Great blog!
"My girlfriend is lawyer so I always wonder if arguing for it's own sake is part of be a lawyer or part of being a girlfriend."
Yes.
Lawyers what actually practise law in actual courtrooms are far less likely to be as ...uncaring... about the truth of their pet theories as law professors are because that sort of attitude does not survive an unsympathetic judge for long...
Law professors on the other hand rarely face this test and hence ignorance can fester uncontrolled.
I have a little sign on my mirror that says: "Lawyers use facts like a drunk uses a lamppost -- for support rather than illumination."
Unfortunately, it is unattributed.
银饰批发
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
北京翻译公司
翻译公司
北京翻译公司
翻译公司
视频聊天
英语翻译
英语翻译
日语翻译
日语翻译
法语翻译
德语翻译
韩语翻译
俄语翻译
小语种翻译
口译
同声传译
软件测试
发电机
发电机组
柴油发电机组
柴油发电机
康明斯柴油发电机组
康明斯发电机组
视频聊天
SKF轴承
FAG轴承
NSK轴承
烟气分析仪
烟气分析仪
FLASH制作
动画制作
租车
3D福利彩票
尿失禁
电子秤
电子磅
数据恢复
拓展训练
月嫂
北京搬家公司
条码打印机
特种胶带
韩国饰品加盟
网上购物系统
渔具
成人用品
搬场公司
水泵
搬家公司
手机信号屏蔽器
搬场公司
办公家具
礼品公司
银饰批发
搬场公司
新时代
服务器
英语翻译
货架 网站流量分析 月嫂 大屏幕 婚庆公司 吸声喷涂 进口轴承 保洁 保洁公司 加固 滑雪 北京滑雪 滑雪场 北京滑雪场 性病 梅毒 疱疹 前列腺炎 尖锐湿疣 非淋菌性尿道炎 高血压 高血压治疗 治疗高血压 真人cs 司法考试 国际机票 保温喷涂 机柜 北京保洁 北京保洁公司 国际机票 婚庆 标签纸 条码打印机 星辰科技 司法考试
Hey, there is really much helpful material above!
Penyakit ini umumnya muncul karena penderita mengejan terlalu keras pada saat buang air besar. Dengan mengejan terlalu keras, maka pembuluh darah di sekitar anus dapat melebar dan pecah menimbulkan infeksi dan pembengkakan yang berakhir pada masalah wasir atau ambeien tersebut.
Penderita Penyakit kondiloma atau Kutil Kelamin yang telah terinveksi disarankan untuk segera melakukan pengobatan secepat mungkin sebelum Virus HPV penyebab kutil kelamin makin banyak berkembang biak di dalam sel darah makin lama dibiarkan akan memperparah kondisi organ vital karena kutil kelamin akan terus membesar sehingga terlihat seperti jengger ayam untuk penderita yang baru tertular kurang dari satu bulan biasanya akan lebih cepat ditanggulangi obat kutil kelamin Paling ampuh dari De Nature dan terbaik ada hanya di http://obatkutildikemaluan.blogdetik.com/ untuk mendapatkan informasi yang lebih jelas mengenai pengobatan kutil pada kelamin silahkan kontak langsung di nomer 0852 808 77 999 atau 0859 7373 5656 Bagaimana mengobati Ambeien itu sendiri. pengobatan yang terbaik untuk Ambeien adalah dari luar dan dalam sehingga Ambeien benar benar tuntas dan tidak akan kambuh lagi. obat Ambeien terbaik "Ambeclear dari De Nature" AlamiAdalah obat Ambeien herbal yang memang terbaik untuk mengobati Ambeien, dan sudah terdaftar di badan obat dan makanan (BPOM) dengan nomer registrasi POM TR: 133 374 041. terbuat dari bahan alami antara lain terdiri Daung Ungu, Mahkota Dewa dan Kunyit Putih.
cara yang alami menyembuhkan penyakit wasir ambeien secara alami dengan menggunakan daun ungu serta mahkotadewa aman untuk ibu hamil tanpa operasi cukup dengan menggunakan obat wasir herbal ambeclear terbuat
wasir ambeien bisa sembuh tanpa harus di operasi maupun injeksi cukup dengan obat wasir ambeien herbal ambeclear herbal de nature dari daun ungu serta mahkotadewa aman untuk ibu hamil
Berapa Harga untuk Obat Wasir Ambeien alami daun ungu Ambeclear – Ambeien adalah gangguan atau penyakit yang terjadi pada saluran pencernaan manusia
Bukan hanya pengobatan medis saja tapi ada juga pengobatan rumah alami yang dapat digunakan untuk menyingkirkan penyakit kutil kelamin ini. Intinya, karena kutil ini muncul di daerah yang sensitif, maka anda harus mencari pengobatan yang terbaik pada kulit Anda dan jika diperlukan juga dibantu dengan tenaga medis yang professional. Sebab dokter akan menjadi sumber informasi yang baik untuk mengobati penyakit ini.
Cara yang sering di lakukan untuk menghilangkan kutil kelamin adalah dengan cara pembedahah atau operasi, cara ini tentu memerlukan dana yang tidak sedikit. metode Pilihan pembedahan yang dapat Anda lakukan
Kadang disertai
dengan sakit saat kencing, perih, organ intim terasa panas menyiksa,
gatal,..
Sekitar Vagina Tumbuh Daging, Berbahayakah? Kutil Pada Kepala Penis mirip bunga kol atau jengger ayam, Merupakan Penyakit Yang diakibatkan Oleh Virus.Kutil kelamin, atau disebut juga condyloma acuminata, adalah kutil atau daging berwarna kulit atau keabuan yang tumbuh di sekitar alat kelamin dan
penyakit yang ditularkan melalui hubungan seks : vaginal, oral dan anal. Juga dapat menular melalui persentuhan kulit dengan daerah yang terinfeksi.
Obat Ambeien Resep Dokter Ambeclear dari De Nature Ampuh Tuntaskan Ambeien Sampai Tuntas
Sebelum kita membahas tentang pengobatan ambeien, dalam kesempatan ini
saya ingin menjelaskan sekilas tentang ambeien, agar kita semua bisa
memahami benar apa itu penyakit ambeien
This was a fantastic article. Really loved reading your we blog post. The information was very informative and
helpful...
Obat Kondiloma Akuminata Manjur
Pengobatan Kondiloma Akuminata Mujarab
Nama Obat Kondiloma Atau Kutil Kelamin
Cara Mengobati Kondiloma Akuminata Herbal
Pengobatan Ampuh Kondiloma Akuminata Tradisional
Bagaimana Mengobati Kondiloma
Obat Penyakit Kondiloma Akuminata Alami
Kondiloma Akuminata dan Pengobatannya
Pengobatan Alternatif Kondiloma Akuminata
Pengobatan Kondiloma Akuminata Pada Wanita
Penyebab Kondiloma dan Pengobatannya
Obat Kanker Payudara Paling Manjur
Mengobati Kanker Payudara Dengan Cepat dan Aman
Pengobatan Herbal Kanker Payudara Stadium 3
Mengobati Kanker Payudara Tanpa Operasi
Cara Mengobati Kanker Payudara Ampuh Stadium Akhir
Cara Mengobati Kanker Payudara Mujarab
Inilah Obat Kanker Payudara Yang Ampuh
Penyakit Kanker Payudara Tanpa Operasi
Obat Kanker Payudara Tanpa Operasi Stadium 2
Cara Tradisional Menyembuhkan Kanker Payudara
Cara Menyembuhkan Kanker Payudara Tanpa Operasi
Bagaimana Cara Mengobati Jengger Ayam
Obat Tradisional Penyakit Jengger Ayam
Cara Pengobatan Jengger Ayam Mujarab
Cara Menyembuhkan Jengger Ayam
Obat Herbal Penyakit Jengger Ayam
Obat Mujarab Untuk Jengger Ayam
Mengobati Jengger Ayam Pada Wanita
Mengobati Jengger Ayam Pada Pria
Pengobatan Tradisional Jengger Ayam
Apa Nama Obat Jengger Ayam
Obat Jengger Ayam Ampuh di Apotik
alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami alami
Post a Comment