Hacker News Reader

Comment by lurquer | Hacker News Reader

>Over the years, their numbers have included construction workers, insurance agents, pharmacists — even an underwear distributor.

Pharmacists are hardly uneducated buffoons. And, what are we to make of 'underwear distributor'? Is there a correlation between a business person's judgment and the items they sell? I doubt it.

I can guarantee that the blueprints a construction worker uses, the policies an insurance agent sells, and the manuals a pharmacist is versed in are all much more complex than the laws governing the cases that come before these low-level courts.

View on HN

The point is pharmacists have 0 legal training.

No matter their expertise I wouldn’t want the construction worker working as my pharmacist without any training.

Yet we’re ok with giving essentially the entire power of the state to people with no training or experience in law.

> The point is pharmacists have 0 legal training.

Sounds a lot like 1/12th of a jury.

Every jury trial has a legally trained (hopefully) judge to assist the jury with the legal aspects of the case.

Jury trials also have jury selection processes that allow lawyers from both sides to eliminate any poorly qualified jurors.

Judges have minimal training in the procedures of the court. Some are attorneys which gives them more familiarity with law and process, but as far as I know that’s not a requirement.

The jury selection process has nothing to do with qualifications of jurors. The prosecutors are primarily trying to eliminate people they think will be sympathetic and the defense is primarily looking to eliminate people they think might biased against their client.

The lack of legal training is exactly the issue at hand.

Juror selection isn’t about qualifications. However, it does give both sides an opportunity to eliminate vested or deeply unqualified interests that may be biased against them. With a judge you have no such option.

Except for appeal. If a judge gets overturned enough on appeal, they can rightly be said to be unreliable. Which means, if they're elected to the position, their opponent can site how many times they got overturned as a legitimate reason to think they're bad at their job.

All of this functions well... unless the electorate is uneducated or misled, and apathetic. That's the real problem in this case. People are winning popularity contests, because the only thing middle and high school taught most of the electorate was that you should be popular.

It isn't true everywhere. Reputation and reputation systems can and do function well. But they require a functional press, and an interested public.

> we’re ok with giving essentially the entire power of the state to people with no training or experience in law

Yes, that's what democracy is, for better or worse: the power of the state is ultimately vested in the people, regardless of training, background, gender, skin color, etc. etc. Restricting power to those who are trained in law, or any other narrowly defined group, is called oligarchy. It generally has good outcomes for the oligarchs and those who are close to them, not so much for everyone else.

> Yes, that's what democracy is

No, it's not. It's perfectly reasonable in our democracy to expect judges to be trained in law in order to effectively do their jobs. Might as well let any random of the street be a doctor without training if that wasn't the case.

Non-legally trained people still participate through the jury system, and more importantly in the House where laws are created in the first place.

> It's perfectly reasonable in our democracy to expect judges to be trained in law in order to effectively do their jobs.

Manifestly not. If it were reasonable to expect this, then the founders would have written it into the Constitution, or the People would have changed the law in order to require it. The former didn't happen, and the latter hasn't happened. It may seem reasonable to you, but the whole point of democracy is that the law is not based on what seems reasonable to one person, only on what seems reasonable to the majority. And in this case, requiring judges be lawyers clearly doesn't seem reasonable to the majority, or things would be different.

No, it does not mean that it seems unreasonable to the majority. Just that it isn't important enough to the majority to effectively influence policy. Laws do not perfectly mirror what the overall population thinks would be best.

> And in this case, requiring judges be lawyers clearly doesn't seem reasonable to the majority, or things would be different.

This assumes that the current state of the law is tacitly approved by the majority of people, which isn't true. For example, polls strongly suggest that a strong majority (>60%) of Americans support marijuana legalization [1], but federal legalization is nowhere to be seen. Polls suggest that an even stronger majority (>80%) of Americans support background checks on all firearm purchases [2], but federal legislation again seems far away.

[1] https://apnews.com/8eb58810be2642b3a2c81e9da247ff80

[2] https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/oct/03/...

Yes, that's true, because the U.S. is not a direct democracy, so a vocal and motivated minority can wield a disproportionate influence over policy. But I don't see a lot of people marching in the streets to change the way judges are chosen.

This conversation is a perfect illustration of the difference between a significant part of US culture and that of many other western nations.

As a Canadian, even after living in the US for over a decade, I find your comment baffling. For better or worse, the law is a complex subject both in jurisprudence and process. If judges can be significantly less knowledgeable than the attorneys that appear before them then how can the law be applied equally?

The US Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law yet how can that be realized if there are no minimum standards that apply to judges?

Two things that I cannot understand about the US: the election of judges and outright politicization of the mechanics of voting.

Look, I don't disagree with you. I agree that electing judges is stupid. Nonetheless, for better or worse, this is the result of democracy.

Note that you could apply the exact same principle to argue that legislators should be lawyers. After all, if you're not trained in the law, how can you possibly write a law? Or understand the many subtle ramifications of the law that someone else wrote that you're voting on? And why stop at legislators? Why not accept, say, literacy tests? How can a citizen possibly make an informed choice at the ballot box if they can't read a newspaper?

The point I'm trying to make is not that electing judges is good, only that it is, at least in the U.S., a direct consequence of democracy. You may decide that democracy is more trouble than it's worth, and cite this stupidity as evidence. But what you cannot do is say that electing judges is stupid and also that you believe in democracy, because in the U.S. the one has followed directly from the other.

How are you jumping from judges not having legal training, to Jim Crow literacy tests?

Jumping? I'm not jumping, I'm applying the principle that people who have influence over the application of the law should have some training. If judges need special training, why not legislators? And if both judges and legislators need special training, why not citizens? Note that we already do apply this principle to naturalized citizens! It is only people who acquired their citizenship by birth who never need to show any competence at anything in order to vote.

And note well: I am not advocating literacy tests. I am only pointing out the logical consequences of adopting the principle that judges should have special training.

There is nothing "logical" about your extending the idea that judges should not have to have legal training before sentencing people to jail. Not to mention, legislators are kept in check by another branch of government which can strike down laws created by legislature. The indigent and commoners hauled before these magistrates are granted no such meaningful review.

Not so. Judges can be impeached by the legislature and recalled by the voters. And there are appeals.

BTW, one of the reasons things are the way they are is that the "indigent and commoners" don't necessarily believe they'll get a fairer shake from someone who has a JD from Harvard than someone who doesn't.

This is South Carolina, which has never really been a fan of the equal protection that's supposed to be provided by the US Constitution.

> ...are all much more complex than the laws governing the cases that come before these low-level courts.

The law is hardly a set of statutes. It's comprised of thousands of judicial opinions interpreting the code and articulating specific doctrines. Court made law is especially important in criminal law. It has nothing in common with reading a construction blueprint. It's honestly horrifying that there are people with legal authority that have no training applying the law.

Criminal law is literally a set of statutes.

Small claims court (the name varies depending on the state, but we're talking about 'Judge Judy' type courts here) is for the quick resolution of minor disputes. In most states, the formal rules of evidence don't apply.

And, in nearly all the states, one can appeal de novo the court's judgment to a 'real' court.

My state recently implemented a requirement that these lower court judges have law degrees. The quality of the court ha suffered... instead of a retired businessperson who has an interest in his community, we end up with incompetent lawyers who can't make a living in private practice. Or, worse, some person straight out of lawschool with zero legal or life experience.

> Criminal law is literally a set of statutes.

Simply untrue in common law countries (e.g. the US). Criminal law is absolutely driven by judicial opinions and statutory interpretation.

> In most states, the formal rules of evidence don't apply.

This isn't about evidence. It's about interpreting many doctrines that vary wildly between states. A single statute (re: defenses, attempt, conspiracy, the requisite mens rea to hold someone liable) can yield totally different interpretations.

I think the point is rather that they are not lawyers.

I have no idea how comparatively complex the law is. But that is hardly a justification for having less training. The potential for harm is the most important factor. That is why you have highly trained engineers or architects (for example). Because mistakes can destroy lives. I think the same should apply to judgeships

Reply on news.ycombinator.com