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Comment by expedition32

18 hours ago

I don't think you can be a lawyer if you take cases personally. At some point you have to defend a rapist who is clearly guilty.

10 comments

expedition32

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n1b0m  17 hours ago

Serious question, do you?

  • mcmcmc  14 hours ago

    No. Tons of lawyers never even touch criminal law. You do not need to be a defense attorney to be a lawyer.

  • ninalanyon  15 hours ago

    Someone has to or there can not be a conviction. Clearly guilty is something that can only truly be said after the decision.

    Unless you want to completely overturn the way criminal trials are conducted in the Anglo American judicial tradition.

skeeter2020  14 hours ago

it's not that they don't take it personally and actually feel the pain/ disgust / fear / <whatever>, it's that they hold the tenets of law as absolute and the most important part of the system. This definitely takes a particular type of person.

  • swat535  12 hours ago

    This is because Christianity played a major role in Western law. While the laws and courts predates Christianity, after the fall of Romans, much of it was rediscovered through Church.

    Many of the courtroom customs were partly influenced by this. For example the Robes/gowns or the emphasis on "law as an absolute", higher standard that sits above personal feelings is also inspired from Christian natural law ideas (i.e rulers and judges under a higher law) even though those ideas were built on Roman foundations.

    So the kind of person who can treat the rules as more important than their own feelings isn't that surprising in that tradition. It requires a certain bit of.. religiosity.

  • busyant  13 hours ago

    agreed. both of my sisters-in-law are lawyers.

    whenever some unsavory person is in the news being defended by his attorney, most of us get upset, but they say stuff like, "his attorney is just doing a good job defending his client. that's how this works."

    I get it, but I'm not built for it.