RE: Hatch wants Gates back

[Mitch Stone <mstone@vc.net>]

--- From a message sent by Tom Kaighin on 7/24/98 10:30 PM ---

>In reference to the 'law' crack,  I will have to take moral offense (and if
>you knew me, you'd be shocked, too)
>
>While you, Declan, may be technically correct in your criticism, we had all
>better hope Eric is closer to the heart of the matter.
>
>Our laws (and those laws of most free countries) are supposed to represent
>what a society considers justice. Just because the spirit of the law is
>nullified by the minutia inherent in the process and the perpetrator cannot
>legally be called a 'criminal', does not make him innocent.

[snip]

Very well said.

Seems I've got a Mary Ann Glendon book for every occasion. Here's 
another: "A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession 
is Transforming American Society." (Harvard U. Press, 1994)

She traces the evolution of the legal fraternity through the history of 
our national culture. In its present guise, the law and those who 
practice it are increasingly remote from the broader purposes of society. 
In turn, the larger national culture suffers as the law takes a holiday. 
Ironically, it becomes more like the legal society, which is 
progressively more confrontatory, isolated, litigious, and unmoored from 
centuries of legal and ethical tradition. Or something along those lines.

What's more, Glendon contends that this is one of the main reasons 
lawyers today are such an unhappy lot -- except for the money, they've 
got no idea why they're practicing law.

Personal conclusion: law may be of necessity an abstraction of moral 
concepts, but it is not divorced from morality. This is known as "keeping 
your eye on the doughnut, and not on the hole."

   Mitch Stone
   Editor, Boycott Microsoft
   http://www.vcnet.com/bms 
 +---
   Timeo daneos et dona ferentes. (I fear the 
   Greeks even when bearing gifts.) ---  Virgil