Kansas Judicial System - Case Managers - Court Whores

August 13, 2013

A History lesson on Lawyers (Not all - but the far majority apply)

      A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political and social authority, and deliver justice. Working as a lawyer involves the practical application of abstract legal theories and knowledge to solve specific individualized problems, or to advance the interests of those who retain (i.e., hire) lawyers to perform legal services. 
      Lawyers were widely unloved in the 17th century in America. The first lawyer who arrived in the Plymouth colony in 1624 or 1625 is said to have been jailed and then expelled from the colony for scandalous behavior. For a time, the Bodies of Liberties (1641) of the Massachusetts Bay Colony prohibited “pleading for hire”; Virginia excluded lawyers from her Courts in 1645; Connecticut also prohibited them. The Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolina’s (1669) said it was a "base and vile thing to plead for money or reward". William Penn had a Quaker’s distaste for lawyers and formal laws. In 1682, his laws provided for the appointment of three "peacemakers" in each precinct whose "arbitration’s" were to stand as legal judgments. Thus, in Pennsylvania, it was said: "They have no lawyers. Everyone is to tell his own case, or some friend for him. . . . 'Tis a happy country." Resentment of lawyers continued into the revolutionary period and beyond.
      If there is a stain on the record of our forefathers, a dark hour in the earliest history of the American Colonies, it would be the hanging of the "witches" at Salem. That was a pinpoint in place and time -- a brief lapse into hysteria. For the most part, our seventeenth century colonists were scrupulously fair, even in fear.
      There was one group of people they feared with reason -- a society, you might say, whose often insidious craft had claimed a multitude of victims, ever since the Middle ages in Europe. One group of people were hated and feared from Massachusetts Bay to Virginia. The Magistrate would not burn them at the stake, although surely a great many of the colonists would have recommended such a solution. Our forefathers were baffled by them.
      In the first place, where did they come from? Of all who sailed from England to Plymouth in 1620, not one lawyer was aboard. "VERMIN." That's what the Colonist called them. Parasites who fed on human misery, spreading sorrow and confusion wherever they went. "DESTRUCTIVE." They were called. And still they were permitted coexistence with the colonists. For a while, anyway. Of course there were colonial laws prohibiting the practice of their infamous craft. Somehow a way was always found around all those laws.
      In 1641, Massachusetts Bay colony took a novel approach to the problem. The governors attempted to starve the "devils" out of existence through economic exclusion. They were denied wages, and thereby it was hoped that they would perish. Four years later, Virginia followed the example of Massachusetts Bay, and for a while it seemed that the dilemma had been resolved. It had not, somehow the parasites managed to survive, and the mere nearness of them made the colonists skin crawl.
      In 1658, In Virginia, the final solution: Banishment; EXILE. The "treacherous ones" were cast out of the colony. At last, after decades of enduring the psychological gloom, the sun came out and the birds sang, and all was right with the world. And the elation continued for a generation. I'm not sure why the Virginians eventually allowed the outcasts to return, but they did. In 1680, after twenty-two years, the despised ones were readmitted to the colony on the condition that they are subjected to the strictest surveillance. How soon we forget!
      For indeed over the next half century or so, the imposed restrictions were slowly, quietly swept away. And those whose treachery had been feared since the Middle Ages ultimately took their place in society. You see, the "vermin" that once infested colonial America, the parasites who prayed on the misfortunes of their neighbors until finally they were officially banished from Virginia, those dreaded, despised, outcasts, masters of confusion were lawyers.
      In most civil law countries, the government has traditionally exercised tight control over the legal profession in order to ensure a steady supply of loyal judges and bureaucrats. That is, lawyers were expected first and foremost to serve the state, and the availability of counsel for private litigants was an afterthought. Even in civil law countries like Norway which have partially self-regulating professions, the Ministry of Justice is the sole issuer of licenses, and makes its own independent re-evaluation of a lawyer's fitness to practice after a lawyer has been expelled from the Advocates' Association. Brazil is an unusual exception in that its national Order of Advocates has become a fully self-regulating institution (with direct control over licensing) and has successfully resisted government attempts to place it under the control of the Ministry of Labor. 
      Of all the civil law countries, Communist countries historically went the farthest towards total state control, with all Communist lawyers forced to practice in collectives by the mid-1950s. China is a prime example: technically, the People's Republic of China did not have lawyers, and instead had only poorly-trained, state-employed "legal workers," prior to the enactment of a comprehensive reform package in 1996 by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. 
      In contrast, common law lawyers have traditionally regulated themselves through institutions where the influence of non-lawyers, if any, was weak and indirect (despite nominal state control). Such institutions have been traditionally dominated by private practitioners who opposed strong state control of the profession on the grounds that it would endanger the ability of lawyers to zealously and competently advocate their clients' causes in the adversarial system of justice.
      The concept of the self-regulating profession has been criticized as a sham which serves to legitimize the professional monopoly while protecting the profession from public scrutiny. Disciplinary mechanisms have been astonishingly ineffective, and penalties have been light or nonexistent.
      A key difference among countries is whether lawyers should be regulated solely by an independent judiciary and its subordinate institutions (a self-regulating legal profession), or whether lawyers should be subject to supervision by the Ministry of Justice in the executive branch, legislatures or executive branches..
      If you want to review or see the problems in this country – you only have to look at our Federal Government that is now over run with these Vermin?? Have to love the election process…..