The key advice in today’s legal environment is to get a good lawyer because it’s no longer the facts that count, but how the facts are presented. A smart lawyer who really understands the details of the legal system can help you beat it.
Years ago, as a young man, I was advised (by a Judge no less) how to “beat the system” for a traffic violation of which I was guilty. I wanted to protest the amount of the fine which I viewed as too steep, so I set a time to appear before the court. Since I pled guilty, I was required to pay the fine. Because my police officer was not present, the case would have been dismissed if I had pled “not guilty”. This is what the Judge advised me I should have done after we were finished!
In an age of excessive regulation (a tyranny of over-regulation) and moral relativism, more people have less of a problem lying about their guilt in such a case. Even judges, educated in the Law schools of today, do not understand that true justice depends on absolutes of right and wrong. The “value” in a value-relative society becomes how smartly you can play the system, not whether or not you operate with integrity. Rather than “bravo if you don’t tell a lie”, it becomes “bravo if you know how to play the system to your own advantage”. If you want to win your case, take it to a court where judge and jury can be predicted for the outcome you desire.
Law schools are in fact increasingly teaching that common law and higher law are not the basis for law. They teach a sociological basis for law, not a transcendent, objective basis. Legal positivism as well as the critical-legal-studies movement both repudiate objective standards of law. The law effectively becomes arbitrary. Under sociological law, illegalities are only a consequence of the application by others of rules to an “offender”. Things are not illegal because they are inherently wrong or logical consequences of inherently wrong things. They are wrong only because different societies and cultures decide they are wrong. This is value relativism in law schools. It justifies an arbitrary legal code and undermines any real responsibility to uphold the law because it discards the higher basis for law. If the law is only as good as men, then I might as well create my own law!
A country, and a democratic country especially, is only as good as its people. If its people do not live by legitimate internal standards of right and wrong, the country will slide toward chaos and, eventually, a loss of freedom. Where irresponsibility abounds, some form of law must eventually step in. Freedom requires moral responsibility.
A legal system based on the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” is designed to protect the citizen from potentially corrupt authorities. It protects the freedom of the people. Yet it is a system that depends on the responsibility of the citizen to do the right thing. Otherwise, people will try to outsmart the system, resulting in tremendous burden on the State to prove the guilt of an increasingly dishonest and corrupt citizenry. Chaos builds in the courts and in society. This is why John Adams said at the founding of America, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”
– Mark Cadwallader, Board Chairman of Creation Moments
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