(For more of Paladin's wisdom, buy the complete first season of Have Gun, Will Travel here.)

Every now and again some young criminal-defense lawyer on some listserv will suggest that we criminal-defense lawyers should "set everything for trial." If we set everything for trial, the theory goes, either the government becomes much more reasonable in the cases it charges and the offers it makes, or the system crumbles under its own weight. The underlying theory of cause and effect is correct. But, because

So I listed four big reasons blawgers should attribute ideas with which they disagree:For yourself;For your readers;For those with whom you disagree; andFor the blawgosphere.To illustrate the hazards of non-attribution, I pointed out a couple of Norm Pattis's and Jamison Koehler's unattributed statements, and asked: who said it, when, and where?Both Pattis and Koehler commented. Koehler agreed with me, but didn't answer the questions. Pattis, in a

Clay Conrad writes:[A]lmost nobody denies that, say, executing an innocent man would be a substantive injustice. So, if there can be a substantive injustice, then there must be, by elimination, substantive justice.Why does that follow?Say that it's unjust to execute an innocent man. Does that mean that every time an innocent man is not executed (three and a half billion times a day; seven billion if "man"

To do with it what he or she pleases.(H/T Patrick at Popehat)

People can't choose what they desire, but they "choose" what they desire, and should generally be able to do what they "choose."That is, people can't choose to want one thing over another (because what they desire is controlled entirely by their environment and heredity), but it appears to them (illusorily) that they choose the thing that they desire, and they should not generally be constrained from acting

We have heard talk of “justice.” Is there anybody who knows what justice is? No one on earth can measure out justice. Can you look at any man and say what he deserves—whether he deserves hanging by the neck until dead or life in prison or thirty days in prison or a medal? The human mind is blind to all who seek to look in at it

At the request of a colleague out of state, I put the call out on a Texaswide criminal defense listserv for the names of some lawyers who would be good to handle a felony drug case in a faraway Texas small town.As the "I can handle those" responses came rolling in, I realized: that's not at all what I'm looking for. I don't want to know who

Quoth Vincent Bugliosi, in a comment posted by John Kindley:’Everyone is entitled to be represented by an attorney’ is the idealistic chant often recited by defense attorneys as justification for representing even the most vicious criminals in our society. The concept is unassailable, but idealism is rarely what motivates lawyers who represent guilty defendants. They take the work because trying cases is their livelihood, and they are

When you come to an intersection with a sign like this. . . . . .and you want to make a left turn, and the light is green, do not wait behind the stop line for a break in the oncoming traffic. Instead, pull forward into the intersection. If there is another left-turn-yield lane in the oncoming traffic, pull about a third of the way into the