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November 9, 2004

Florida's Amendment 3

It may be interesting to consider the possibility of Florida’s Supreme Court striking down Amendment 3 under an "access to the courts" type of argument. There is little doubt that the odds are that somehow, some way, the Bar will find a way to neuter this amendment by attacking it in the courts, in direct contravention of the expressed, democratic and clear public will of the people.

I enjoy Overlawyered.com, you do a great service. -- Philip Monte, Member, State Bar of Florida, Tallahassee, Florida

[For more on the post-Amendment-3 legal maneuvering, see Point Of Law, Nov. 4 -- W.O.]

Posted by Walter Olson at 10:29 PM |

Enough about Edwards already

OK, OK, we get it, Mr. Edwards is a trial lawyer with all the dubious ethics of the profession (dubious ethics surely being no bar to the political profession, no matter what your party membership), and other trial lawyers appear to love him to the tune of millions of bucks. We understand that, so can you lay off it a little now? I'm a foreign reader, because the U.S. is not alone, though it seems to be the worst afflicted, with a legal system run amuck. I am deeply and personally interested in tort reform; we all should be, right or left, red or blue, whatever. (I work in the fairly lefty social services sector, and insurance rates and liability fears are severely constraining what we can do to help our clients-- its an immediate and practical issue, not an ideological one.)

One of the sadnesses of the U.S. dominance of the global media, is that it gives the U.S.'s insane partisanship a global reach, so that issues get tagged and tainted. It is horrible that tort reform has become a partisan issue in the U.S.; both because it is corrupting the Democrats as they rake in litigator dollars, but also because the worth of the cause is being tainted by association with highly partisan and often dubious Republican partisans (i.e. just like Mr. Edwards), and we end up in a Monkey's Paw scenario where the solution may well be worse than the disease. (It's all rather like stem-cell research: for obscure technical legal and theological bases leading to political positioning, rational discussion of the topic is almost impossible now.) From my foreign point of view, a plague upon both their houses, but please, we have to keep the focus on the issue. So fair enough, your comment so far, but please do not become, or appear to become, a Republican front. Surely there must be some litigatory smirch on some Republican vests? -- Rob Bray, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Posted by Walter Olson at 10:06 PM |

Credibility undermined

I know it is tempting to use the bully pulpit provided by the website to campaign for your preferred candidate, but frankly, Overlawyered has been the only legal blog website I've seen that was willing to concentrate on its avowed mission, and not clutter its pages with partisan chatter. We get enough of that from the N.Y. Times and Fox News.

As an attorney with almost 20 years in practice, I have been dismayed by the direction the profession has taken... it is not a turn for the better. Overlawyered performs a valuable service. Please don't continue to undermine the credibility of your website. -- anonymous reader

[In response to this and the previous letter, a few observations:

* Just as some readers think the site pays too much attention to U.S. politics, so other readers' patience is tried when we cover, say, toxic-tort or cerebral palsy litigation in detail. Think of it as like reading a magazine, and scroll or click past the bits that aren't your favorites. As it happens, several other readers have written in to accuse us of wasting pixels by including so many stories from Canada, the U.K. and Australia; the site should maintain a tight U.S. focus, they think. The same advice applies to them.

* There's reason to believe our politics coverage this year has been popular, however, because our commentaries on John Edwards and on the presidential race have gotten higher visitor traffic, and been more linked to, than almost any other posts in the site's five-year-plus history. Some of the new visitors have bookmarked the site and become regular readers, and traffic is up on "ordinary" days as well.

* Like it or not, this is a personal as distinct from an institutional site, and you're going to get my (and, when he ventures it, Ted's) opinions on various matters of public moment I think important, as well as oddments such as links to some of the non-law-related things I write. (Some readers complain that I don't include enough personal stuff.)

* While it would probably be rather dull to "campaign for [my] preferred" candidate at any length, it would be equally dull to pretend never to have any preferences whatever. In the case of this year's presidential race, the point of my Oct. 26 post was precisely to disabuse readers of the idea that I had a "preferred candidate" to promote, since neither major party candidate seemed to me worthy of endorsement. -- W.O.]

Posted by Walter Olson at 9:55 PM |

Federal Marriage Amendment

From what I've seen of the marriage amendments you cite (Nov. 2), they sound bad... but, to give you the other viewpoint, I'd still take those over the absolute judicial tyranny of Massachusetts. I think most people feel that way, and they didn't stop to think that the third choice would be to get a better amendment (like the "nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require..." type language, for instance). Hopefully, now that they've got the main issue covered, next time, more moderate amendments can scale it back to something more reasonable.

I think it's kind of like this: a neighbor down the block had their house broken into and severely vandalized (that's how a lot of people feel about it, I think), so something needs to be done NOW. Boarding up all the windows and buying a bulletproof door is a bit extreme (and possibly damaging to the house), but if the current choices are that or nothing (that's all that made it to the ballot), boards it is.

Not the best analogy, but I think it gets the idea across. After Roe v Wade, a whole lot of people have basically said "ENOUGH!" - and the price they're willing to pay to follow through on that is pretty high.

At least, that's how I see it. If I had had that choice on the ballot, I'm not sure how I would have voted - I think it would depend on how imminent I thought the need was. A "nothing in this Constitution..." type amendment would be a no-brainer, of course. -- David Allen, Amarillo, Tex.

Posted by Walter Olson at 9:45 PM |