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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cosmicforce who wrote (466388)	1/27/2021 3:38:01 PM
From: Doo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540753

Interesting observation and comments from your professional vantage point. Capricious and inconsistent? Okay. I can see the point you are making, generally. Law is more art than science. Rarely is there a clear answer for a lawyer representing a client. The reason seems to be that if it was clear there'd be no case or controversy that brought the client to the door. Practice is almost 100% working in the nooks and crannies the law has not yet exposed to light, even in areas where the law is significantly developed. I have to say, though, that over 30 years in the profession I probably looked at secondary sources (the "links" I suspect that don't work in opinions) cited by a court unless my case was in real shit shape. I went to them hoping for a miracle reference. I'd say that happened a dozen times which is another way of saying, "almost never" or ".000001%" of the time I was looking at a specific legal issue. I only remember finding any sliver of help in one of those case, however. I never searched or found any impulse or need to search the court "record" of past cases which is what you are referring to as "evidence used in decisions." The exception to that was when I was working on an appeal, and the burden on appeal is for the appealing party to prepare and produce the record for the appellate tribunal. I don't think I recall ever looking for past briefs filed in appeals of cases I wasn't involved in except once. And, they were available without much effort by going to the court and looking them up. So was the entire record on appeal (the 'evidence' as you've called it). Legislative history is sometimes involved in cases where statutes at issue are unclear ('ambiguous' is the term of art). Searched that history maybe 3 times over 30 years. My comments are only from my own practice in civil litigation. Perhaps there are other areas of law where you concerns and criticisms would be more germane. For me and those in my world, though, we just didn't see the problem you identify so well.f