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I.� Introduction
I'd like a show of hands, if you're willing:
How many of us in the class like attorneys in general?
How about politicians?
Bearing in mind that some in this class may be planning
a career in Law or Politics, the rest of us probably just stepped on
their toes.� I will do that even more so
during the next few minutes.� However, I hope that the offended parties will bear
with me, because it may be valuable to you to know why others dislike your
intended profession so much.
I'll be showing you an issue of injustice which
plagues this nation and many others
around the world.� By the time I finish, you'll know what it's costing us
financially, what it costs us in the form of injustice, what it has
done to my
family, and one way that the problem can be solved.
When I tell you what has been done to my family, you should be horrified.� If you can't cope with it, I'll understand when you
leave.�� I wish I could.� For every traumatic
event you ever hear about, another person had to experience it .
II.� Body
A.� The
Price
Most of the population dislikes the Legal and Political professions
because of the
financial power that people in these professions wield over the
rest of us.� In
a nation that proclaims, "liberty and justice for all", isn't it a bit strange that
in order to obtain justice, one has to pay a week's wage for an hour's work,
and pay for the first 10 to 50 hours in advance, with no guarantee of success?
According to Cynthia Calvert on WomenLawyers.com, "Hourly
rates typically run from $125 to $450 (or even
higher)."
In my opinion, that's holding justice for ransom.� If
any other profession demanded that
much in exchange for that little, we wouldn't stand for it!
B.� The
Result
As a result, when people resort to legal litigation
for a dispute, all too often the
attorneys on both sides are the ones who eventually own the entire value
of the subject of the dispute, while the litigants wind up selling the
disputed property� to cover the legal expenses, and so the legal case is
dropped.
As Voltaire complained, �I was never ruined but twice
once when I lost a lawsuit and
once when I gained one�.
C.� The
Experience
Do you think you can imagine what that is really
like?� I would like very much to
not know, and therefore not tell you, what it's like to have justice
held for ransom.� I
don't want to
even think about it, so I hope no one will ask me much about it later .� However,
I'm a political refugee from Lassen County, California.
On the night of my wedding in 1995, my new 16 year
old step-daughter was impregnated
during a date-rape committed by an adult.� She pressed charges against
the assailant, unaware that his father held a position on the County
Grand Jury that would allow him and his attorney to subvert an Assistant
District Attorney, Child Protective Services, her employer, her teacher,
the Mental Health Department, and an attorney which the court eventually
assigned to represent her baby.
In retaliation for the rape charge, the rapist's
parents took my step-daughter to
family court to take custody of her baby.� During litigation, the court
refused her repeated requests for counsel, and we were unable to find
pro bono, or free, counsel for her. We contacted many attorneys
and bar associations that supposedly refer pro bono services, and
they were so uninterested in reading our letters that they unanimously
recommended
that we
take actions that our letters explained we had already taken.
When she was 18, she needed to travel to Los Angeles
to receive training for a
new career.� The court required her to leave the baby with the rapist's parents
when she left.� When she returned for her baby, she was told she
had to sign a "release" before she could have him back.� Under
the pressure of
being separated from her baby for the first time, and having no means
to obtain legal advice, she signed the document, which in reality gave custody
of the baby to them.
Still lacking legal counsel, she tried through the
family court to regain custody ,
or at least visitation with her baby.� At the urging of the attorney appointed to
represent the baby, the court refused both on the basis that she had
not met conditions that were never specified, either by an attorney, or
by the court.
Without legal counsel, it took over a year to learn
that the conditions which my
step-daughter had failed to meet were based upon a court order that
was a figment of the attorney's imagination.� Before� my step-daughter could
argue this injustice in court, she had not been allowed to visit her
baby for a year and a half, and the court ruled that she had abandoned him,
and allowed the rapist's parents to adopt him.
We were unable to pay the ransom for which the legal
profession held the justice for
which our taxes had paid.� In other words, we were unable to pay the
protection money which the petty mob bosses of the "Legal" profession demanded.
I still get flashbacks when I see an audience looking
at me, when I feel I'm being judged,
when I hear a phone ring, or especially when I hear a baby cry or
a girl scream.� I haven't been able to hold a full time job since
then.
The pocket of terrorism at the other end of Highway
36 may be small compared with
those across the ocean, but it is no less real.� The terrorists there
are no better than their counterparts . They have declared
war against justice no less than any other terrorist group.
Our state and federal governments refused to
deal with this issue.
D.� The
Source
The
source of this power over the common populace is created by an influence which
is called a "Conflict of Interest".� This is
described by California Government Code Section 87302
as, "An investment, business position ,
interest in real property, or source of income... ...if the business entity in
which the investment or business position is held, the interest
in real property,
or the income or source of income may foreseeably be affected materially
by any decision made or participated in by the designated employee
by virtue of his or her position."
Aren't
the business positions and sources of income of lawyers entirely
dependent upon the laws and procedures legislated by government?
What of
the lawyers who have been permitted to hold elected office and the conflict
of interest that this presents to them?
Even when
legislators are lawyers, they frequently hire teams of other lawyers to
write their legislation for them.� Other legislators almost always do
so.� However, of all professions represented among the elected officials in
this nation, lawyers are the most prevalent.�
For example,
according to the American Presidents web site of� C-SPAN, of the
Presidents the United States has had, from John Adams to Bill Clinton,
23 of the 43, or 53% of them, have been
lawyers.
This conflict
of interest is even more prevalent among court judges. Almost all
judges were attorneys before becoming judges.
E.� The
Solution
It doesn't have to be this way. *
Traffic Court, in which defendants frequently face
the court themselves, and Small
Claims Court, in which litigants must face the court for themselves ,
show that justice is capable of functioning without attorneys.
I must admit that different litigants have differing
abilities to present their cases to
the court, but that disparity is nothing compared to that faced
by a clueless
teenager who is opposed by an unscrupulous attorney.
In some cases, attorneys may be necessary, such as
representing business entities ,
children, or the mentally or emotionally disabled.� However, they must be available equally to all who qualify.� The
laws, courts,� procedures, and legal terminology of this nation must
be redesigned so that they do not impede justice for common citizens .
In order to do that, the nations laws will have to be
designed by common citizens, not by attorneys
whose conflict of interest has created this situation.� In effect, the elected
officials who write our legislation must not be attorneys, and they must
write the legislation themselves instead of hiring attorneys
to do it
for them.
This will not be an easy change to make, since attorneys
are so strongly represented among
elected officials.� Only by replacing them with competent people
from other professions who are willing to make this change can
the change be made.
III.� Conclusion
I've presented
evidence of injustice that plagues this nation and many others around
the world.� You now know what it's costing us financially, what it
costs us in the form of injustice, what it has done to my family,
and one way
that the problem could be solved.
There is no excuse for a "Legal" profession which has
designed such baffling laws, procedures, and terminology that
the rest of us don't even understand false accusations when lawyers make them against us in court.�� A class of people that subverts the justice of a nation
does not deserve� to exist, much less
to hold the inequitable position they currently have.
While apologizing for stepping on peoples� toes, I must point
out that it's because the ground is so thickly
littered with toes that I have no other place left to stand.
A nation that teaches its children to recite, "liberty and justice for all", has an obligation to practice
what it preaches.� But if you'd like living in a nation where paying protection
money to penny ante mob bosses is common, stay put.� You're already
there.
*Actually,
it does have to be that way, as long as men presume to rule over one another.
I only made this statement a part of my speech, because the assignment required
me to make a "call to action" that my audience could consider acting
upon.
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