Boxers or Briefs?

There is the general misconception amongst the lay public that within the practice of law there is justice. That’s partially true: our system allows for the pursuit of justice with rewards for those who prevail and punishment to the defeated.

But pursuit does not justice make and the system itself is purpose-built to address only what it can and it can only do so within a finite sphere of reality with rules applied thereto. So the application of what is fair and just in the broader reaches of generic society does not mean that the bounds of laws are so defined. In other words, what is right and wrong between men in the daily traversal of their experience in the world does not necessarily have a corrolary in the system of law.

The system has limited scope in order to function at some plane of reasonableness. To start with, the judicial functions of government are broken down into particular sectors, each with their own bureaucracy and system distinct from others as would be defined by the laws pertinent to that sector. The sectors can be so different so as to be inaccessible to some lawyers who would have studied in school the principles of Family Law or Criminal Law but in practice might only function within the Probate arena. The choice of such a lawyer to defend against a charge of assault would not be appropriate and the lawyer would be bound by ethics to advise the client of his limitations. The client could, of course, still choose that lawyer to represent him and hopefully, the lawyer would decline in the best interests of the prospective client.

For instance, if a parking ticket is issued in the State of New York, that ticket, which is a essentially an application by the State to order the defendant to answer a charge of, say, parking at a meter that has timed out and either accept that the State has correctly made its charge and hence the defendant pays a monetary fine or to have an argument made in court as to why, as a matter of lawful fact, the defendant should be not guilty of the allegation of overtime parking or that there are mitigating factors that should be considered by the court in meting out something other than the statuatory punishment