Tim May wrote:
It's time to stop this "court appointed attorney" nonsense. If we as a nation want to change our legal system to one where the court appoints both sides of a case, prosecution and defense, as in many other countries, fine. But it's absurd to finance the hiring of defense lawyers.
or courts, for that matter. presumably under cryptoanarchy you won't have courts - an imposition of authority on people presumed to accept it - but arbitrators, agreed upon by the two sides. unlike in the common-law, jury system, such arbitrators would perhaps be able to use their intelligence to figure things out by talking to the opposing sides directly, instead of requiring lawyers to pick fights in matters of a "law" so distant from the people it affects that they can't interpret it directly. however, with courts - and the common-law/jury system, which has _some_ benefits over, say, the French or Spanish inquisitorial system of law - you tend to require lawyers, and i suppose court-appointed attornees are a way of "making justice blind" as it ought to be. of course, perhaps lawyers should be avoided by not just the poor defence, but the rich prosecution - the hilariously entertaining McLibel case in Britain showed that gutsy, if somewhat misguided, lawyerless people could pull quite a bit over an expensive "dream team", which McDonalds had. -Rishab First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet http://www.firstmonday.dk/ Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen Intl & Managing Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (ghosh@firstmonday.dk) Mobile +91 98110 14574; Fax +91 11 2209608; Tel +91 11 2454717 A4/204 Ekta Apts., 9 Indraprastha Extn, New Delhi 110092 INDIA