Karen Kraft
29
- Joined
- May 18, 2002
- Posts
- 36,253
The history of American law owes nearly all of its underpinnings to the English legal system. From the Star Chamber (English court of law in the Royal Palace at Westminster) right down to Municipal Court in numerous American home towns, the idea is still the same: either two or more parties or the State and one or more parties have different opinions as to what ought to be done to maintain justice and equity in society, so they submit respective arguments and evidence to a government employee who finds and declares what the facts are and then makes determinations of law by applying the more convincing arguments and evidence to the body of law set in forth in books. A decision is then rendered and people either accept it and go their respective ways, or they appeal the ruling to some higher legal authority. Justice and fairness are the goal, of course, but these goals are often not reached for a variety of reasons.
Much of the court process was bizarre and mystifying to the average person and often the proceedings hinged on principles stated and argued in the Latin language. Even in an era when every post-elementary student was required to learn Latin, the workings of the judiciary were strange and frightening. People gazed in awe as perfectly normal citizens donned the robes and wigs and spoke to each other in lavishly decorated halls of justice. Tremendous respect grew from that awe, until the professions of attorney, lawyer, counselor, barrister, and solicitor were ranked just below the clergy, in terms of respect and admiration.
From the early years of the populist movement in the United States, right through the 1970s and 1980s, there has been an effort to normalize what goes on in court so people might have a greater understanding as to how their legal fate was determined in any particular case. Strange sizes of paper were abandoned, the costumes of royal court were replaced with ordinary business attire, and the language was simplified so that the average educated person willing to take the time to read a document or pleading carefully could, it was hoped, understand part if not all of it. Gone were “Know all Men by These Presents that the undersigned Party of the First Part is, does, and has, this day of our Lord _________, rendered his hand and set his seal to attest that he duly kept and maintained, in accordance with that certain Section of the Common Code heretofore known as Folio Exacta, and then affirmed and restated during codification as …”
That waste of time, energy, and paper are long gone in most places, replaced by computer box-checking and electronic filing. If an attorney needs to argue legal principles stated in Latin, he or she had better hope to have an old judge and a patient one. But all that pomp and circumstance had a secondary importance, one often overlooked.
Since the Norman Invasion, one way to distinguish the “worthy” from the “unworthy” was through their language usage. The unwashed said that they would “keep” something handy or in good order, while the gentry would say that they would “maintain” the same. Latin was not the language of the general population then either, of course, nor were any of the Latin based or Romance languages.
Doctors also use Latin to “keep and maintain” a sense of awe with respect to their craft. Prescriptions are still written in Latin, with arcane medical shorthand and symbols unfamiliar to the less educated public. Why? Was it really because the pharmacist didn’t speak the local language (this is not a good sign in any event), or because such a prescription could now be taken overseas to get it filled? No, it was to separate the common people from the special and nearly sacred realm of medicine. Similarly, but to much less an extent, doctors have made their talk and writing more reachable to their patients, just as lawyers have done in their profession. But in a profession based on chemistry, where numbers are the coin of the realm, even plain explanations of how medicines work leave patients mystified. In law, however, there’s no place to hide. The writings an attorney prepares are, these days, designed to be written as simply and clearly as possible – for the benefit of the judge, colleagues, and the patient.
The average person can still sense that there is something more complicated in a doctor’s decision-making and advice-giving than appears on the surface. The magic of the profession is not all that well hidden. On the other hand, most educated people think that lawyers don’t do anything they, the client, can’t do – had they the time or patience to use the legal system themselves.
Then came the insurance companies. What began as a cute little jab at the legal profession, spawned in part by some rather distasteful Supreme Court decisions during the [Earl] Warren era, the lawyer joke was a seed carefully planted. That seed has grown over the decades but not without the fertilizer spread on the land by unprincipled attorneys and seemingly bizarre rulings. The “doctor jokes” usually revolved around the idea that doctors thought of themselves at very least at par with God, or the idea that they were obsessed with the acquisition of money. Example: Doctor Greenbaum was driving his BMW when it suddenly went off the road and down a steep embankment. When the car finally stopped the good doctor shrieked in horror, “Oh no, my Beemer!” When a witness alerted the doctor to the fact that his arm had been severed in the crash, the doctor again shrieked, “Oh no, my Roley!!”
But for the most part, people like or even love their doctors. It’s not the doctor’s fault they got sick, but the doctor gives them pain medication, runs some tests, and figures out how to get them back in order. People go to the doctor for “preventative health care visits.” These are generally positive experiences, notwithstanding some uncomfortable and embarrassing pokes and intrusions into interior spaces of the body not normally visited in a non-erotic setting.
Few people go to their lawyer for preventative visits. They are perfectly capable of negotiating that lease by themselves – or writing their own Will, etc. Why not? All you have to do is download the form and it’s as good as any lawyer could ever do, right? Maybe. So long as nothing goes wrong in the future. But things tend to go wrong in life – both in law and in medicine. Whose fault is it that Harvey forgot to mention his estranged wife (who he hated) in his Will, but who nevertheless got most of his property upon his death? “It’s the */!!%&!! lawyers! That’s whose fault it is. Everyone knew that Harvey hated his ex- well ALMOST EX- wife. You can ask anybody – even the wife! But the wife hired a slimy, blood-sucking, bottom-feeding attorney who helped Harvey’s wife steal the rightful inheritance from Harvey’s rightful heirs. Thus, the jokes about lawyers mostly revolve around dishonesty and immorality. Example: An airliner was having engine trouble, and the pilot instructed the cabin crew to have the passengers take their seats and get prepared for an emergency landing. A few minutes later, the pilot asked the flight attendants if everyone was buckled in and ready. "All set back here, Captain," came the reply, "except for the lawyer who is still going around passing out business cards." Or, why don’t sharks attack lawyers? Professional courtesy!
When people DO decide to go see a lawyer, more often than not, it’s not for anything voluntary or pleasant. It’s usually some mess they are in and sometimes that mess is of their own creation. Someone needs to be blamed, right?
So, the insurance industry was getting annoyed at the way juries were handing out huge awards to people who became ill after taking defective medications. It is the fault of the doctors? Not really; they are saints at the very least. The chemists? No, they are just doing their best to bring happiness to everyone. It’s not the defective drug at all! It’s the bottom-feeding shyster lawyer who filed that frivolous Thalidomide lawsuit! All those horrid birth defects never would have happened were it not for the unscrupulous lawyers!
What starts out as a “joke,” if repeated enough, takes on a sense of truth and reality. That’s why decent people avoid racial and religious humor outside their own group. Anyone who had dealt with an insurance company knows just how altruistic they are.
Once the legal profession was nearly universally hated, all to the benefit of the insurance companies, fighting the good fight in the name of doctors and medical malpractice premium reduction, the insurance industry has decided to line its pockets with even more gold, by going after the medical profession. Ask a new doctor at his or her first job after finishing his or her residency how many BMWs and Rolex wristwatches they are going to buy this year.
But the reputation of doctors will survive, unlike that of lawyers. Among many other reasons, is that the medical profession is wise enough to keep the Latin “mystery” visible to the patients. Doctors are smarter than lawyers – they know that the “common man” will lose faith and trust in a profession equally as unpredictable as the legal profession if the magic and mystery are stripped away.
Between the oil companies and the insurance companies, the bulk of the non-housing expenses for the average American go into the pockets of the insurance and energy industries. What does a doctor sell you? Preventative health advice or a cure or relief from pain when you need it. What does a lawyer sell you? Preventative legal advice or a path to recovery if you get into legal trouble. What does the insurance industry sell you? A promise that may or may not be kept when that crisis or moment of need presents itself.
Once the medical profession is brought to its knees, the insurance industry will focus on the pharmaceutical industry. Again, greedy blood-sucking, animal-torturing monsters who get $50 for a pill that costs them $1 to make! Once people got so fed up with bad faith insurance claims handling that many quit even buying auto insurance or home insurance, the purchase became mandatory (for the good of society, of course). So, what every happened to medical malpractice insurance premiums since the insurance industry put a stop to people being able to sue negligent doctors? You guessed it, the premiums have skyrocketed. Why? Because insurance is the only game in town, and ensures its position by lining not only their own pockets but the pockets of nearly every elected official in the land. Is it wrong for them to do so? Not really. It’s their right to do that, within the laws as they are written. Who writes those laws anyway? Politicians, that’s who.
What are the two lowest professions in terms of honor and prestige? Lawyer and Politician. What is the highest, next to clergy? Judge. What is a judge? A lawyer who is good friends with a politician.
Much of the court process was bizarre and mystifying to the average person and often the proceedings hinged on principles stated and argued in the Latin language. Even in an era when every post-elementary student was required to learn Latin, the workings of the judiciary were strange and frightening. People gazed in awe as perfectly normal citizens donned the robes and wigs and spoke to each other in lavishly decorated halls of justice. Tremendous respect grew from that awe, until the professions of attorney, lawyer, counselor, barrister, and solicitor were ranked just below the clergy, in terms of respect and admiration.
From the early years of the populist movement in the United States, right through the 1970s and 1980s, there has been an effort to normalize what goes on in court so people might have a greater understanding as to how their legal fate was determined in any particular case. Strange sizes of paper were abandoned, the costumes of royal court were replaced with ordinary business attire, and the language was simplified so that the average educated person willing to take the time to read a document or pleading carefully could, it was hoped, understand part if not all of it. Gone were “Know all Men by These Presents that the undersigned Party of the First Part is, does, and has, this day of our Lord _________, rendered his hand and set his seal to attest that he duly kept and maintained, in accordance with that certain Section of the Common Code heretofore known as Folio Exacta, and then affirmed and restated during codification as …”
That waste of time, energy, and paper are long gone in most places, replaced by computer box-checking and electronic filing. If an attorney needs to argue legal principles stated in Latin, he or she had better hope to have an old judge and a patient one. But all that pomp and circumstance had a secondary importance, one often overlooked.
Since the Norman Invasion, one way to distinguish the “worthy” from the “unworthy” was through their language usage. The unwashed said that they would “keep” something handy or in good order, while the gentry would say that they would “maintain” the same. Latin was not the language of the general population then either, of course, nor were any of the Latin based or Romance languages.
Doctors also use Latin to “keep and maintain” a sense of awe with respect to their craft. Prescriptions are still written in Latin, with arcane medical shorthand and symbols unfamiliar to the less educated public. Why? Was it really because the pharmacist didn’t speak the local language (this is not a good sign in any event), or because such a prescription could now be taken overseas to get it filled? No, it was to separate the common people from the special and nearly sacred realm of medicine. Similarly, but to much less an extent, doctors have made their talk and writing more reachable to their patients, just as lawyers have done in their profession. But in a profession based on chemistry, where numbers are the coin of the realm, even plain explanations of how medicines work leave patients mystified. In law, however, there’s no place to hide. The writings an attorney prepares are, these days, designed to be written as simply and clearly as possible – for the benefit of the judge, colleagues, and the patient.
The average person can still sense that there is something more complicated in a doctor’s decision-making and advice-giving than appears on the surface. The magic of the profession is not all that well hidden. On the other hand, most educated people think that lawyers don’t do anything they, the client, can’t do – had they the time or patience to use the legal system themselves.
Then came the insurance companies. What began as a cute little jab at the legal profession, spawned in part by some rather distasteful Supreme Court decisions during the [Earl] Warren era, the lawyer joke was a seed carefully planted. That seed has grown over the decades but not without the fertilizer spread on the land by unprincipled attorneys and seemingly bizarre rulings. The “doctor jokes” usually revolved around the idea that doctors thought of themselves at very least at par with God, or the idea that they were obsessed with the acquisition of money. Example: Doctor Greenbaum was driving his BMW when it suddenly went off the road and down a steep embankment. When the car finally stopped the good doctor shrieked in horror, “Oh no, my Beemer!” When a witness alerted the doctor to the fact that his arm had been severed in the crash, the doctor again shrieked, “Oh no, my Roley!!”
But for the most part, people like or even love their doctors. It’s not the doctor’s fault they got sick, but the doctor gives them pain medication, runs some tests, and figures out how to get them back in order. People go to the doctor for “preventative health care visits.” These are generally positive experiences, notwithstanding some uncomfortable and embarrassing pokes and intrusions into interior spaces of the body not normally visited in a non-erotic setting.
Few people go to their lawyer for preventative visits. They are perfectly capable of negotiating that lease by themselves – or writing their own Will, etc. Why not? All you have to do is download the form and it’s as good as any lawyer could ever do, right? Maybe. So long as nothing goes wrong in the future. But things tend to go wrong in life – both in law and in medicine. Whose fault is it that Harvey forgot to mention his estranged wife (who he hated) in his Will, but who nevertheless got most of his property upon his death? “It’s the */!!%&!! lawyers! That’s whose fault it is. Everyone knew that Harvey hated his ex- well ALMOST EX- wife. You can ask anybody – even the wife! But the wife hired a slimy, blood-sucking, bottom-feeding attorney who helped Harvey’s wife steal the rightful inheritance from Harvey’s rightful heirs. Thus, the jokes about lawyers mostly revolve around dishonesty and immorality. Example: An airliner was having engine trouble, and the pilot instructed the cabin crew to have the passengers take their seats and get prepared for an emergency landing. A few minutes later, the pilot asked the flight attendants if everyone was buckled in and ready. "All set back here, Captain," came the reply, "except for the lawyer who is still going around passing out business cards." Or, why don’t sharks attack lawyers? Professional courtesy!
When people DO decide to go see a lawyer, more often than not, it’s not for anything voluntary or pleasant. It’s usually some mess they are in and sometimes that mess is of their own creation. Someone needs to be blamed, right?
So, the insurance industry was getting annoyed at the way juries were handing out huge awards to people who became ill after taking defective medications. It is the fault of the doctors? Not really; they are saints at the very least. The chemists? No, they are just doing their best to bring happiness to everyone. It’s not the defective drug at all! It’s the bottom-feeding shyster lawyer who filed that frivolous Thalidomide lawsuit! All those horrid birth defects never would have happened were it not for the unscrupulous lawyers!
What starts out as a “joke,” if repeated enough, takes on a sense of truth and reality. That’s why decent people avoid racial and religious humor outside their own group. Anyone who had dealt with an insurance company knows just how altruistic they are.
Once the legal profession was nearly universally hated, all to the benefit of the insurance companies, fighting the good fight in the name of doctors and medical malpractice premium reduction, the insurance industry has decided to line its pockets with even more gold, by going after the medical profession. Ask a new doctor at his or her first job after finishing his or her residency how many BMWs and Rolex wristwatches they are going to buy this year.
But the reputation of doctors will survive, unlike that of lawyers. Among many other reasons, is that the medical profession is wise enough to keep the Latin “mystery” visible to the patients. Doctors are smarter than lawyers – they know that the “common man” will lose faith and trust in a profession equally as unpredictable as the legal profession if the magic and mystery are stripped away.
Between the oil companies and the insurance companies, the bulk of the non-housing expenses for the average American go into the pockets of the insurance and energy industries. What does a doctor sell you? Preventative health advice or a cure or relief from pain when you need it. What does a lawyer sell you? Preventative legal advice or a path to recovery if you get into legal trouble. What does the insurance industry sell you? A promise that may or may not be kept when that crisis or moment of need presents itself.
Once the medical profession is brought to its knees, the insurance industry will focus on the pharmaceutical industry. Again, greedy blood-sucking, animal-torturing monsters who get $50 for a pill that costs them $1 to make! Once people got so fed up with bad faith insurance claims handling that many quit even buying auto insurance or home insurance, the purchase became mandatory (for the good of society, of course). So, what every happened to medical malpractice insurance premiums since the insurance industry put a stop to people being able to sue negligent doctors? You guessed it, the premiums have skyrocketed. Why? Because insurance is the only game in town, and ensures its position by lining not only their own pockets but the pockets of nearly every elected official in the land. Is it wrong for them to do so? Not really. It’s their right to do that, within the laws as they are written. Who writes those laws anyway? Politicians, that’s who.
What are the two lowest professions in terms of honor and prestige? Lawyer and Politician. What is the highest, next to clergy? Judge. What is a judge? A lawyer who is good friends with a politician.
