Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Yeah, That's It

And if anybody paid attention to the testimony in those two trials, I'm sure the FBI would be embarassed.

No, actually, I'm not. (diGenova should be.  Durham would be questioning FBI agents in direct examination.  They would be his witnesses.)

And what is the functional difference between diGenova there, and this guy?
I've seen people on Twitter make the same claims for the ABA, which is also "a marketing and trade group" whose sole function seems to be making terrible recommendations about the qualifications of judges for the federal bench. (Full disclosure: I am still a member of the State Bar of Texas, which licenses and disciplines lawyers in Texas. I have never been, and never will be, a member of the ABA. No reason to, frankly.) And frankly, it just got worse. No, using the ABA as an analogy, (I'm taking Popehat's word for it on the New York Bar Association), neither entity should "weigh in on ethical matters," because legal ethics are not necessarily "popular" ethics.
I mean this as simply as I can put it:  there are ethics binding priests (Roman Catholics, I mean, and the confessional, for one) that don't bind Protestant ministers (no sacrament of confession, for one), ethics that bind doctors, ethics as discussed by ethicists, ethics as understood by Aristotle (nothing to do with morality or what we call "ethical" today), ethics in the popular parlance, etc.  You err to confuse one with the other, or to think "ethics" is a word with one universal and totalizing meaning.  Words simply don't work like that.

Legal ethics are a matter of ethical standards promulgated by a licensing agency (like the State Bar of Texas, with which I am most familiar), and then (again, in Texas anyway) disciplinary rules.  The former are guardrails on a roadway:  stay away from them and you're on the "straight and narrow."  Bump into them, you do yourself no favors, but you can drive away (metaphorically speaking).  DR's are more like the legendary "third rail."  Touch them and your career could die.  In Texas, to be disbarred, you have to violate the DR's.  Usually to do that you have to have already blown through the Ethical Guidelines, but if they didn't slow you down the DR's will slap you silly.  Those ethical guidelines, by the way, are bit less specific than the DR's, but not by much (due process requires clarity; DR's are enforced in court; EG's can be enforced by a State Bar decree, basically telling you to watch yer ass).  And the ethical guidelines you might presume a lawyer should be following ain't necessarily the ones the State Bar is looking at.

Which is why non-licensing agencies whose primary function is marketing, never ventures an opinion on the ethical behavior of a lawyer.  First, they'd have to do so based on news accounts (which could qualify, worst-case, as slander by the agency); second (and this relates back to the slander possibility), they have no investigatory power and therefor no way to know if the lawyer has behaved unethically or not.  And (third), "unethical" based on what?  Popular opinion?  Or whatever ethical guidelines apply to that lawyer, guideliness non-licensing agencies are not authorized to investigate or issue reports on.  Anything they say about the "ethics" of a lawyer is pronounced in the kangaroo court of public opinion.

Which, as I say, could come back to a slander/libel suit.  So they just don't do it.

All a long winded way to get to this, which is the nadir of Twitter argument, everytime.  Call it a reverse ad hominem, since it's so pathetic I don't think anyone has yet to give it a Latin name as a separate logical fallacy.
My father was 5'7". He was short. Not to mention if Gasparino is "all muscle," that would explain what's between his ears.

Don't do this on the intertoobs, kids; or on cable TeeVee, for that matter.  Just don't.
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