Friday, April 22, 2022
In The Verdict Frank Galvin says, in his summation, "In my religion, they say, 'Act as if ye had faith... and faith will be given to you.'" I think about that a lot. When I walk into court I believe that my arguments will be persuasive, and that the merits will carry the day, but that has never meant that when I prevail on behalf of my client I'm not surprised. I'm always surprised, even though I have faith that the system works the way it should, the way we have to believe if we are going to function as lawyers. It is a strange sort of cognitive dissonance, and it probably accounts why so many of us are such a mess.
This morning I woke up to NPR telling me that the lawsuit which seeks to bar Marjorie Taylor Green from the ballot is a "longshot". The history of the judicial interpretation of 14th Amendment might lead one to reasonably believe that courts are not inclined to even read the 14th Amendment. Whole big pieces of it have been ignored from the moment it was enacted, and the part that forms the basis for this particular lawsuit doesn't have a great deal of precedent to aid in its interpretation, but even so it says what it says, and should be read to mean what it says. That being the case NPR is not helping when it finds it appropriate to evaluate the claim before there has been any proof adduced. Acting as though you have no faith in the system has never, in my experience as a lawyer, brought about a just result.
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