Priority legal judgment or priority moral judgment?
Comparing the power of precedents in legal, moral, and empirical reasoning can reveal the nature and goals of these reasoning processes, as well as the truths against which they are directed. Given the breadth of the subject, my goal here cannot be complete. My purpose is to point out some interesting and instructive comparisons. My general point is that precedent is less useful for experience than for moral reasoning, less useful for morality than for legal judgment. In law, the “gravity” of previous rulings represents a genuinely reasonable institutional requirement; In moral reasoning, prior judgments produce global constraints rather than quasi-local constraints, and their scope is more limited to that of one’s own prior judgments; In science and more mundane empirical reasoning, conservatism is at best a strategic assumption that can be easily disproved about earlier theories and beliefs.
We can start with Stare decisis, or legal precedent, whose use is institutionally sanctioned and extensively documented.
Even so, there is disagreement over the legitimacy and practical effectiveness of the principle. It is often claimed that this doctrine can be proved by appealing to the principle of formal justice, which of course applies to both legal and moral fields. (Goldman, 1987)
This is an old question. In some high-profile cases, apparent villains have been defended in court and eventually acquitted, turning the public against the lawyers who represent them. Or, when the public discovers that a person is guilty and their lawyers knew it all along but still vigorously defend them, the reaction is usually negative. A case in point is Stephen Feldman, a California lawyer who defended David Westerfield, who was convicted of murdering a 7-year-old girl.
Put yourself in the shoes of any defendant. Let’s say you’re in a legal dispute, you’re accused of a crime, and you hire a lawyer to defend you. Deep inside, you know you’ve done something you shouldn’t– but not exactly the crime you’re accused of having committed. Of course, you don’t want to face the harsh punishment the prosecution is demanding.
Prior to establishing trust with your lawyer, you’ll want to know two things:
1.Does your lawyer think you committed a crime?
2.Whether your lawyer thinks you are innocent or guilty, can he or she put that aside and defend you?
Talk to most criminal lawyers and they will tell you that the answer to the first question doesn’t matter. Most of them might not even want to know what kind of a crime a person has committed. Deciding whether someone is guilty or not is not within the job descriptions of lawyers. The real question is number two: can a lawyer properly represent you? That’s because the real job of a lawyer is to provide a robust defense to the crime you’re accused of. Therefore, when seeking a criminal defense attorney, it is most important to find one who takes his legal responsibilities seriously and will do his best to fully defend you.
But what if the truth came out?
An important condition of this question is that even if the client admits “guilt” to his or her lawyer, the lawyer may never truly establish the client’s guilt. Clients may lie to cover for others, or other factors may be at work. There are some standards that keep lawyers honest: if they do know information about a client’s legal offense, they can’t lie, and they can’t provide evidence that they know is false. But attorney-client privilege does protect attorney-client communication. It’s important to remember that it’s not a lawyer’s job to identify real crimes. This is the ruling of the court.
REFERENCE:
brunolaw.com. (2022). How can a criminal defense lawyer defend someone who’s guilty? [online] Available at: https://brunolaw.com/resources/general-criminal-law/how-can-a-criminal-defense-lawyer-defend-someone-whos-guilty [Accessed 8 Jun. 2022].
Goldman, A.H. (1987). The Force of Precedent in Legal, Moral, and Empirical Reasoning. Synthese, [online] 71(3), pp.323–346. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20116404 [Accessed 9 Jun. 2022].
