Small Law

The Bad Lawyer has lived around the world, and has practiced law, after a fashion, in some pretty glamorous venues, including at least one mayor's court that was in a converted garage. 

One of my pet peeves over time has been the obsession of law journals, major newspapers, and in the digital age, legal-centric websites with Big Firm law, federal and felony level litigation.  For the average person, the attention given to this sort of legal mattter is utterly unhelpful unless they are called to jury duty.  While traffic, municipal court, and justice of the peace offices are boring, this is in reality where the action is for most law-abiding citizens.  And despite what I just said, what happens in these courts is not boring.   Sometimes, what happens in these courts is not justice as the New York Times series called "Broken Bench" on New York's Justice Court system demonstrated convincingly, in 2006.  This last year we had the Lousiana Justice of the Peace who refused to perform an interracial marriage, as reported by CNN.

Frequently the "judges" in these small courts are not lawyers, and are not otherwise trained in the law.  OurState decided to raise revenue by instituting a "red light camera."  The "super lawyer" that shares a house with the Bad Lawyer tends to get invoices arising out of driving through these lights and speeding through these speed zones.  Being the Bad Lawyer that I am, I perceive some issues that make these seelf-actuating tickets problematic, for instance where's the expert to certify that these machines are accurate.  On the "super lawyer's" behalf, we contested a few of the citations that arrived in the mail.  Who heard the case?  Not a lawyer.  Where did this traffic magistrate obtain his training in the rules of evidence, rules of civil or criminal procedure, traffic laws?  He did not.  The due process infirmity underlying this revenue-generating business for municipalities may continue to be a issue in the law for a long time. 

The bigger point is that when we tote up our experiences over the course of a year, this major trial, that Supreme Court decision, this scandal, that verdict in the news, on television, or the web--really doesn't effect most citizens.  We take our collective eyes off the ball, when we neglect small law.  Small law is where most people most of the time interact and obtain their impressions of justice in America.  Small law matters most to most people, but you would not know it from the important day-to-day coverage of Balloon Boy's parents, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Michael Jackson's doctor's case, Anna Nicole Smith's paternity, the Fort Hood Shooting, and on and on. 

You want to know what's happening in the law, go sit in the local municipal courtroom for an hour or so on a Monday morning.   If your lucky you will see good and bad lawyers, you will see good and bad judges, if you live near a Mayor's court, you might get to watch non-lawyers pretend to be judges.  Trust me this is far more entertaining that Judge Judy.  These are your neighbors, businesses, bar patrons, and town druggies.  This is highly entertaining stuff, it's free; it better be open to you; don't take popcorn; and take your hat off, please.   Ladies and gentlemen, it is your government, for better or worse in action.

Newspapers Suck!

Bloomberg Business reported that newspapers, nationally suffered broad-based circulation losses, see:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a3zVFwU3wo7A

Let's face it, newspaper retrenchment has not reached a bottom largely because NEWSPAPERS SUCK.  Don't get me wrong, I love reading the NYT, and occasionally I find Our Home Town Newspaper amusing and edifying as when our fashion columnist spent two columns of space describing her husband's desire to wear a bicycle cap a la Wesley Snipes in White Men Can's Jump..  At least at the Times there are genuinely talented journos, and amazing writers across disciplines and sciences.  As it relates to the law: Linda Greenhouse and Adam Liptak are brilliant.  The Times (and the Wall Street Journal are) exceptions to the rule.  Even at the local press, including ours, there are journalists and editors who are principled, talented and committed professionals.  Unfortunately, and for years, no decades, the bulk of the product passing as a newspaper in Our Home Town sucked.  It covered real news, barely, and while corruption in local and state government flourished, the newspaper, it's editors, and its journalists were clueless--no, worse than clueless,  Our Home Town Newless Paper, endorsed the very crooks and demagogues that today's scandals fuel their headlines.

In my opinion one of the real failures of the local press was their unwillingness and inability to appreciate and understand the complexities of criminal and civil law.  Oh sure they'd run a picture of Judge Italianname or Judge Irishname or Judge Menses-Insanity throwing the book at some poor shmuck without any explanation of jail-prison overcrowding, crooked law enforcement deals, bad policing, and horrible judicial work.  The failure of newspaper legal coverage is directly attributable to to not hiring lawyer-journalists to cover the law beats and the sheer laziness of the journalists and editors who were responsible for the coverage to invest in the job of telling the readership what they needed to know.   Why hire an experienced lawyer to tell you what the hell is going on in the Justice Palace when the sports writer will do just as well?

Look, let me say it again--there are many exceptions (in fact during the Catholic Child Sex Abuse Scandals there were at least four local journalists who took the time to invest in telling the history and providing the legal context to the underlying story, but)--to the general rule.  Too often important stories that directly effected the lives of the people are completely ignored by the journalists and editors too disengaged to tell important stories that make waves, that matter to you and me. The courts, the law, civil and criminal law relates to the THIRD BRANCH of government--the we-the-people branch of government and the local newspaper did not bother to cover what directly impacted you and me.  Frankly, court coverage is one of the most direct areas of interface for the community, you wouldn't know it by what passes as "news."

So if the newspaper doesn't cover what absolutely matters to you and me, if it isn't a resource for what counts in our lives, if it doesn't explain who, what, when, and why to us--why should we bother to buy the paper?  There's no mystery why their circulation numbers are in the toilet, the Newspapers sucked at what they did--surprise, surprise when something better came along, the readership was gone.