[559] in libertarians
Re: lawyers (was Re: PGP Creator needs your help )
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin THEOBALD)
Tue Jan 10 18:29:33 1995
From: theobald@duke.cs.mcgill.ca (Kevin THEOBALD)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 18:27:27 -0500
In-Reply-To: Vernon Imrich's message [lawyers (was Re: PGP Creator needs your help )] as of Jan 10, 17:40
To: Vernon Imrich <vimrich@MIT.EDU>, libertarians@MIT.EDU
| |> | >Estimates are that Zimmermann's defense will cost over $100,000--and that
| |> | >doesn't even count lawyers' fees.
| |>
| |> How can it cost $100K for something OTHER than lawyers?
| |>
| |> Kevin
|
| Well, to be fair, your average construction project usually has that
| much in cost overruns (witness the "big dig" in Boston).
|
| It is true though, that we have reached the stage where it takes longer
| to go through the process of litigation over a given building project
| than to actually build it (often by sizeable factors).
I still don't get it. I thought that most of these costs consisted of
shelling out a few hundred bucks an hour to lawyers who can figure out
clever arcane arguments to outwit the prosecution's clever arcane arguments.
So where does this extra $100K go if not to Zimmermann's lawyers?
I'd love to see a Supreme Court ruling that if the government violates a
defendant's constitutional rights, they have to pay the defendant's legal
expenses. (I don't mean in cases where the Court does a novel interpretation
of the constitution and establishes a new right -- the government can't be
blamed for violating a non-existent rule. But when the government deliberately
violates established rights, the defense attorney can often get the client
off, and the client goes bankrupt paying off the lawyer, while the government
just raises taxes.
Kevin
