Simple Justice

He's only expelled from the school and publicly "known" as a rapist, no big deal. But you're right, it's not criminal liability, which is why back when this was still a new thing advocates wanted it to be more than "just" expulsion - https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/scarlet-letter-would-… Which brings us back to - why are colleges making determinations about rape? Like Professor Johnson says from that article: “If the student is guilty, that’s not anywhere near sufficient punishment,” Johnson said. “But if the student is innocent, this is a life-altering thing. If they’re going to put it on a student’s permanent record, they need to do a lot more than they do now to be sure they get it right.” The actual criminal justice system is already horrifyingly cruel on sex offenders, even after they've served their time, and after they've registered on the "informative, not punitive" sex offender registries. Scott Greenfield covers the trampling of civil liberties under the guise of "protecting the children" here - https://blog.simplejustice.us/?s=sex+offender. The punishments range from where to live, to whether you're allowed to use the Internet, and those are the legal ones - how well do you think a sex offender reintegrates into society when no one wants to employ them or associate with them? I don't see any reasons to doubt that, if left…

> Well sure I see that point: one should hire good attorneys. If one cannot afford good attorneys, one is boned. That doesn't seem profound. (Not particularly just either, but whatever.) The author addressed this ad nauseam in the comments. In particular, see: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2013/10/03/lavabits-levisons-really-bad-c… > My previous comment was thinking more generally. Society has in the past successfully weathered innovations in technology and commerce without the legal profession running amok. Often innovators were not "connected" enough to hire the best legal representation, if they did so at all. What's different this time? I don't think technological innovation has ever had the potential to disrupt existing power structures as much as the Internet and cryptography. I'm not sure what you mean by "legal profession running amok," but if you mean bad court decisions and draconian government legal theories, that's nothing new. We're only starting to see this in the context of technology because of the aforementioned clash between technology and government power.

If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell. https://blog.simplejustice.us/2017/04/11/filipovics-dilemma-when-facts…

Such arguments were certainly made: https://blog.simplejustice.us/2024/02/24/is-there-a-first-amendment-ri…

Saw this law blog post this morning with the same conclusion (mentioned in passing): https://blog.simplejustice.us/2021/06/04/scotus-limits-reach-of-cfaa/

Scott Greenfield, a practicing defense attorney, wrote about this and previous attempts at using "science" to create/identify "indisputable" evidence: https://blog.simplejustice.us/2019/01/22/junk-science-is-dead-long-liv…

Scott Greenfield covered your exact point pretty well over at his "Simple Justice" law blog https://blog.simplejustice.us/2015/10/06/ten-favs-from-the-bill-of-rig…

Some smart people think that you may be more right than I realized: https://blog.simplejustice.us/2017/08/10/walter-olson-a-circle-of-sile… Effectively they're saying that the "Hostile Work Environment" clause is used to pressure corporations to limit speech of their employees. Evidence also suggests enforcement is ideologically biased.

I think this is even more scary: https://blog.simplejustice.us/2017/05/08/short-take-magic-cop-powers-o… tl;dr: cop goes for a 160h course, gets a Drug Recognition Expert certificate, then his opinion "based on his training" is enough to establish probable cause and make an arrest and then you sit in jail for however long it takes for tests to get back (if that even helps because "tests come back wrong all the time")

An actual criminal attorney in NYC did a far better job of deconstructing this judicial tourist's article than I can: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2016/08/13/the-dilettante-judge/

While more training is definitely necessary, it begs the question of what's being taught, because my guess is the "first rule of policing" (see link) is still a core part of the curriculum http://blog.simplejustice.us/2011/06/19/the-first-rule-of-policing-a-d…

Lawyer friend told me its not uncommon so the ruling is remembered and talked about. Here are some other examples of "creative writing" http://blog.simplejustice.us/2007/08/30/texas-where-decisions-are-deci…

One issue could be that the crimes foreign terrorists are accused of tend to be particularly heinous, so courts would be more likely than usual to make one-sided rulings to make sure they got convicted. A potential example can be seen in the recent trial of domestic terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, where serious questions about the impartiality of the jury were apparently ignored: https://blog.simplejustice.us/2015/01/23/just-another-term-of-art/ The decision not to change venue was later upheld on appeal, with a dissent: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/01/03/no… Perhaps in this particular case the decision wasn't wrong but it's not hard to imagine other, worse scenarios. And in these foreign terrorism cases there's all kinds of crazy stuff going on, like bribing random governments to identify and kidnap suspects for us to interrogate. Faced with the choice of (a) not doing that kind of stuff anymore, (b) letting the accused terrorists go free because our questionable activities violated their rights or tainted the evidence against them, or (c) interpreting the law to make all this stuff allowed, I'm not sure I want to find out what we would pick.