People v. State

Resolved: To better know and observe my own limitations. A man’s got to know his limitations.

I started this blog with the intention of making it about both “the philosophy and practice of law and liberty.” It’s been tilted more towards philosophy than practice, and since after getting my B.A. in philosophy back in 1994 I quickly gave up on my plan to pursue a doctorate in philosophy in favor of a juris doctorate I’m not much more qualified than your average lawyer to speak on philosophical subjects.

I admire but can’t hold a candle to those bloggers like Jeff Gamso and many others who regularly offer substantive, insightful and practical posts on the criminal law (i.e., the law criminal defense attorneys are actually constrained to deal with, rather than the Law I like to occupy myself with). Don’t get me wrong. Some of the happiest times in my life have been when I’ve had the opportunity to sink my teeth into an actual legal controversy involving statutes and case law and such, and IMHO I think I’m pretty good at it. I have posted a few things of a more practical nature, such as here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. But it generally takes an actual client with an actual problem (or a law review deadline) to get those juices flowing for me, and I’ve taken the consensus of the practical blawgosphere to heart and tried to be circumspect about writing about my own cases, at least until after they’re over. I imagine that what those other bloggers have that I don’t is a lifetime of experience in the criminal law, giving them a broader context in which statutes and case law and such are intrinsically interesting even when they don’t touch on a current client’s problems. They don’t have to do a lot of research to write a post about where a new case fits in the context because they already have a pretty good idea. Maybe someday I’ll get to that level. In the meantime, I learn from and appreciate them.

I’m happy about some of the more philosophical subjects I’ve covered, and feel like I’ve contributed something to the discussion. The notion that the government should loan all defendants (not just the indigent) funds for a competent defense and forgive the loan if they’re acquitted seemed to get some traction for a minute, even though such a notion has almost no practical chance of being enacted in the legal system as we know it. And not to rehash the controversy, but even though everybody disagreed with me I think my skeptical challenge to the common wisdom regarding the role of the criminal defense attorney relative to justice and the role of the prosecutor needed to be said. Other highlights, for which I can claim less originality, were posts about practicing law without a license, the right of attorneys to criticize judges, jury nullification, the attorney’s oath, and the propriety of black robes and church-like courthouses and addressing judges as “Your Honor.”

Underlying all of this has been my belief that the philosophical anarchism which has been the constant theme of this blog could not help but have positive practical consequences for criminal defense if more fully realized in society.

In honor of the New Year I’ve tweaked the appearance of the blog a bit. Most prominent is the bold red circle-A which clearly marks this blog as anarchist territory. The A stands for Anarchy and the O stands for Order, and the whole thing stands for Anarchy is Order. I want to assure my concerned friends in the blawgosphere that I care as much about Order as they do. If society were to travel some distance along the road to Anarchy and it then clearly appeared from that closer vantage point that Anarchy is not Order but is in fact Chaos, I would cheerfully reevaluate my commitments. But Anarchy is also self-evident Truth, and we should follow the Truth as far as we can, unless and until disaster seems imminent, at which point we may choose something other than Truth. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, Anarchy has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

I’ve also revamped my Disclaimer. Hopefully now first-time visitors will be appropriately forewarned.

I’ve struggled from the beginning of this blog with the whole concept of a blogroll. Early on I replaced the blogroll with a clip displaying those posts I “Shared” from Google Reader. Then I got lazy and replaced that with a clip displaying all posts of selected blogs from Google Reader. What I’m going to try to do now is replace all of that with a more frequent Instapunditian heh indeed-style of linking / blogging during the week with a more substantive post on the weekend. Links are good, right? Very often other bloggers say what I would say if I was smarter, and it occurs to me that I can express myself better on this blog by saying “what he (or she) said” than by not saying anything at all because I can’t or don’t have time to think of anything to add to what’s already been said so well.

Hopefully this plan will be more rather than less compatible with my own peculiar limitations, and with my other resolutions. I’m not ashamed to admit my limitations on this blog, although I’ve got more than I’ve admitted to here. If part of my intention when I started this blog was to promote myself, I’ve already veered far from that path. A couple of clients have mentioned they visited this blog before retaining me. Undoubtedly there have been others I’ll never know about who took one look at one of my posts and quickly moved on.

May you measure your limitations by what you’ve got under the hood and not by the sign on the side of the road. Happy New Year!

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