Individual Responsibility for Legal Outcomes

Another line of criticism may be developed through an examination of the impact of a formal, rule-based system of law on its individual legal actors. In this essay, we shall focus specifically on the degree to which a procedural system makes it easier for lawyers, judges, and other legal professionals to morally distance themselves from legal outcomes. With this aim, we will look at three related characteristics of a formal legal system that may encourage the disassociation of legal actions from legal consequences, and provide means to avoid taking personal responsibility for morally distasteful legal results. Together, _, although it is important to note that facilitation of moral distance is not a mandate of immorality, and it would be naïve to assert that many legal professionals feel no

The first morally distancing aspect of a procedural legal system arises from of the psychological concept of indirectness bias. Indirectness bias refers to the human tendency to place greater moral weight on activities that are a direct, rather than indirect, result of their actions. The idea that directness generally factors into moral calculations and moral liability has been shown experimentally, and is reflected in many of our justifications for proximate cause and other legal doctrines.

A procedural system of law creates indirectness by its very nature. A rule-centric legal system creates a procedural decision tree, making the consequences of actions dependant on a sequence of subsequent events, and possibly influenced by a number of other legal actors. The testimony of a policeman lying under oath in a complex trial may be influenced by several levels of procedural __, spin by attorneys, motions, Regardless of the degree to which these subsequent influences actually have an intervening effect, the mere appearance of

A ruled based legal system further distances legal actions from outcomes by providing fixed roles and an _ ethical code to its actors. This aspect of procedural legal systems is particularly prevalent in the adversarial model of American law. A central assumption of this type of system is that a just outcome will tend to arise when each legal actor is effectively performing his or her role in the overall legal process. This assumption, that the system is responsible for the justice (or injustice) of the outcome, has the potential to provide a easy moral scapegoat for the individuals working within the system. Because American legal professionals are taught to believe in the efficacy of procedural justice, and because they are bound by an ethical code to zealously perform the duties of their role, it again becomes easier to shrug off personally distasteful consequences of their actions. Indeed, a strong belief in procedural justice may imply that there is no basis for personal moral judgment whatsoever – if justice simply is what is produced by the formal system (Frank’s critiques not withstanding), it would seem to be __ NOT to feel moral discomfort at the outcomes of the system. It is important to note that Although it should not be implied that the individuals within the legal system have no eye for the overall just outcome of, this

A third, related morally distancing characteristic of procedural law can be found in the restraints it places on its actors to influence the consequences of the process. An ethical and procedural code necessarily limits the impact that each legal actor can have on the outcome. These constraints Although the facilitation of moral distance may be perceived as a weakness of a procedural system of law, it is important to note that such a tendency is not absolute. Just as Frank was careful to point out that the human role as fact-decider does not preclude justice, we must be careful here to not overstate the power of the disassociating characteristics of a formal legal system. It would be naïve to assert that judges and attorneys are