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Individual Responsibility for Legal Outcomes |
| | In "Modern Legal Magic," Jerome Frank outlines a historical transition in the rules governing legal outcomes. In his terms, this shift saw legal decision-makers abandoning the ritual of the legal ordeal, and embracing a conception of law founded on the precepts of logical reasoning. The latter approach is the basis for modern law; the arbitrary legal ritual has been replaced by a presumably rational set of quasi-deterministic legal rules. |
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< | Although this change seems profound, Frank questions its meaningfulness. Any system of legal rules must draw its circumstance from the facts surrounding a case. The truth of these facts must in turn be determined by the human processes of investigation and secernment; truth must be differentiated and given meaning by a finite and limited individual. This factual basis of law makes decision by legal rules as contingent on human factors and circumstance as the disfavored methods of the ordeal. A system of reason and rules may blind us with its complexity, but is only as good as the truth it is based on. |
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> | Although this change seems profound, Frank questions its meaningfulness. Any system of legal rules must draw its circumstance from the facts surrounding a case. The truth of these facts must in turn be determined by the human processes of investigation and secernment (??); truth must be differentiated and given meaning by a finite and limited individual. This factual basis of law makes decision by legal rules as contingent on human factors and circumstance as the disfavored methods of the ordeal. A system of reason and rules may blind us with its complexity, but is only as good as the truth it is based on. |
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Where We Stand Post-Frank |
| | We find ourselves at an impasse. A refined system of legal rules is unable to achieve the objective legal outcomes that would justify its creation. Law is bound by the personal frailties of the individuals charged with administering the system. If we cannot eliminate the human from the law, it would follow that the law must focus on the development of the human. |
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- This does not actually follow. Trying to claim that your bagatelle is entailed by Frank is simply wrong. He wrote, in fact, a book whose title--taken from James Madison--"If Men Were Angels," specifically announced rejection of your supposed inference. Perfectability of man was not his thing, and existentialism likewise. You could have found many ways of introducing your claims, and maybe you still should, although the claims themselves seem to me less compelling than they seem to you. But the way you are going is shut.
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| | Focusing on the Individual |
| | For our law system to function in an effective manner, we must produce legal actors (both truth deciders and judges) that are able to accept personal responsibility for the outcome of the legal process. This trait, which we may refer to as moral courage, produces the impetus for the reform and development of the system. An agent of the law with a deep acceptance of her own role in the consequences of judgment cannot escape the moral obligation to produce a personally acceptable outcome. |
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- Now you are being simplistic. In the first place, most judges I know are acutely conscious of their personal responsibility for the consequences of error. They are also highly knowledgeable about the environments in which they work, and are profoundly aware of the inevitability that any judgment they can make about most of the social situations that most pain them when seen in their courtroom is beyond their legal power and would not be properly executed even if they had the power to order it. They make the decisions the law allows them to make not only because they know what you are forgetting here, that the judge's power "to produce a personally acceptable outcome" is often nil, but also because they know that despite the tragic nature of impersonal procedural government, it is also the only tool for establishing the rule of law, which they consider (sometimes for sentimental and intellectually vacuous and sometimes for the most refined and thoughtful of reasons) an "inestimable blessing."
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| | Developing Truth-Deciders
By placing the responsibility for legal outcomes on the individual legal actor, the practice of law becomes a personal search for a morally tolerable result. Although moral courage must provide the impetus for this investigation, it cannot alone provide the means. The obligation to produce an acceptable result brings with it an obligation to bring to bear the full weight of human intellect and understanding. Reason, science, and rules are thus able to rejoin the legal process, not as moral crutches, but in their proper places as tools of the intellect. The failure of rule-centric law is not a failure of the techniques themselves, but simply a failure of the system to reduce human responsibility for its outcome. |
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- This is a new proposition, which requires defense, and your strong phrasing of the idea almost guarantees that it is indefensible. Everything we think is wrong with formal systems is "simply" a failure to grant judges enough personal discretion? To establish that you have to disestablish many other purportedly contributing elements. Cohen is certain that the problem lies at least in part in properties of formal systems; in order to establish your proposition, you need to show that he is completely wrong. Similarly, you have to have a complete answer for all criticisms that suggest no amount of human moral responsibility will reverse inherent defects in human cognition and limits in human cogitation. Not to mention what I suppose we might call Robespierre Syndrome, or an absolutely virtuous willingness to take total moral responsibility for radical injustice. For which you must possess somewhere about you a complete and indeed retroactive cure good against every form of fanaticism that ever committed judicial murder with self-conscious self-righteousness. Wouldn't a weaker claim make more sense here? Even if it led to a more serious reconsideration of the topic as a whole....
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| | Although the individual decision-maker thus creates the basis of law, her effort alone cannot form the extent of a successful legal system. Law is a social exercise, and must exist as a collaborative effort; a successful truth decider and adjudicator can only succeed within a community of her peers. Constant collaboration and monitoring is not only necessary to produce a flexible and effective legal process, but is essential to maintain the individual sense of morality and responsibility. Feedback from peers can shape and develop the individual’s legal reasoning, but also reinforces the sense of responsibility and duty with which the individual must approach her profession. |
| | A legal system focused on the responsibility of the individual is by its nature mutable. To some, this may suggest an inevitable slippery slope into Nazism or other morally abhorrent condition. This response makes a false assumption about the stability of rule based systems; humans are ultimately responsible for legal outcomes in either case. Our choice is not between objectivity and the despot. The despot will rule regardless. Our choice is between hiding our conscience behind a screen of false objectivity and reason, or forcing ourselves to accept the consequences of our actions - taking full and final responsibility for the outcome of the law. |
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- Here you half-admitted the presence of the difficulty, and then chose to put it behind you by mere force of bluster ("slippery slope to Nazism" is not a good way to make me believe you are taking someone else's argument seriously). All arguments in responsible persuasive writing must be "real," that is, they must acknowledge the presence of a serious issue arising from genuine disagreement between those who, sharing common grounds, reach differing conclusions. When you find yourself suddenly putting an unreal argument in the conclusion, you should immediately go from "writer mode" to "editor mode" and ask why a straw man has been slipped in at bedtime. It almost always indicates a serious flaw in some preceding argument now being covered too little, too late.
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