If you want to understand the law, any law, you have to be able and willing to dig. The legislature starts out with a law that may be explained in legislative history or definitions within the law itself. However, the courts are always called upon to interpret the law when an issue arises.
This often results in the interpretation of a single word at a time because that particular word is the only part of the law in question. This new definition, now a rule or a few sentences or elements explaining the law, is explained in a holding which is the rule applied to that case's specific fact situation.
Then a word within that rule will be in question and it will be explained in another holding. Then a word within the second rule will be in question and it will be explained in another holding. Then a word within the third rule will be in questino and it will be explained in another holding. Yada, yada, yada.
The battle of semantics continues when a fact situation that was never meant to apply to the law or one that the law should not apply to as a matter of equity or fairness comes to bar. For these cases the courts create exceptions, situations in which the law is not to apply. Lawyers and judges, with facts from client cases, continue cutting, scraping, splitting and separating the law into holdings, rules and exceptions diving ever deeper into a semantic debacle.
The law becomes dense and matted, a mess, a criss-crossed web. While I may sound like I'm complaining about the way the law works, I like that our system has courts to examine, develop and explain legislatures laws, as well as their own common law created rules. However, at some point I think the legislature has a duty to re-order laws and consolidate them to create clarity, a broader understanding.
The loopholes built and allowed by our legal system may be my favorite part of it. There's always a hole, a reason why your case is the exception, or why it doesn't fit the definition, but too many exceptions and definitions can make a law weak and difficult to understand. If a law is too difficult to understand then it can't reasonably be followed or it is easy to subvert.
This potential confusion can create substantial unfairness in our system of justice because it makes how good of a lawyer you hire more important than whether or not you are right and/or innocent. If you can afford a better lawyer, who has more time on his hands to work on your case, then he can drill the facts and the law, spinning his diamond-encrusted blade repeatedly until he reaches the depth you need.
Someone with less money hires a less expensive lawyer who often has less time on his hands, so he'll do his best but he just won't be able to spend the time, and he probably won't have the resources, such as a the diamond drill, to dig as deep as necessary to find the proper exception.
Thus, someone with more money has a better shot at winning any case at law simply becaue they can hire a better lawyer. You may say this is simple capitalism and that its fair but something about it bothers me. It's not that I think everyone has the right to the best lawyer, but the current system just creates too much of a gap between those that can hire the Super Lawyers, the magicians that can conjure innocence out of a bubbling bowl of guilt, and those that are given appointed public defenders who are underfunded with unreasonably heavy caseloads.
This imbalance weighs some down and lifts others up. I really don't know how to correct the imbalance but I'm trying to work on it. I know the first step to solving any problem is to isolate it and the second is to discuss it. So, if this interests you at all, let's talk about it. I'd be happy to hear what you think, even if you think I'm full of shit.
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