The Conlawprofs were discussing the vagaries of political labeling when Jon Roland contributed this interesting breakdown of some criteria by which we seem to label folks:
Classifying legal positions
There is a popular tendency to try to classify judges and legal positions and activities on a single left-right spectrum. But most such attempts flounder because positions do not fall on a single dimension.
The original left-right classification arose during the French Revolution, when members of the Assembly who favored peasants and workers sat on the left of the hall, while those who favored royalty and aristocrats sat on the right. While we can still find tendencies among people to favor the poor or the rich, these are not the only conflicting positions. The opposition between individuals and officials, and between strict and loose interpretation of constitutions and other laws, deserve dimensions of their own.
Let's try listing some of the characteristic positions of these spectra and what each favors:
LEFT RIGHT
Taking or use regulation of property Property rights
Property code enforcement Suits by individual complainants
Tax rich more heavily Tax rich and poor equally
Graduated income tax Excise & consumption taxes
Employees Employers
Consumers Producers & Vendors
Women Men
Disadvantaged minorities Majorities
Tax-funded medical care Private-funded medical care
Tax-funded old-age pensions Private investment plans
Welfare for young, poor No welfare
Public jobs, contracts Minimal public-funded employment
Public education Private education
Individuals, small businesses Large corporations
LIBERTARIAN STATIST
Individual rights Powers of officials
No sovereign immunity from suit Sovereign immunity from suit
No official immunity from suit Official immunity from suit
Voluntary or commercial solutions Government solutions
Localization of government Centralization of government
Adjudication Regulation
Article III courts Administrative courts
Militia Standing army
Criminal defendants Criminal prosecutors, judges
Pro se litigants Legal professionals
CONSTITUTIONALIST REALIST
Law only what Constitution authorizes Law is whatever judges do
Law must be logical Law need not be logical
Text & history trumps precedent Precedent trumps text & history
Argue law before juries Impose judge's view of law on juries
No deference to legislature, executive Deference to legislature, executive
No undeclared war Executive action without declaration
Nondetention of "enemy combatants" Indefinite detention of "enemies"
No penal power from commerce clause Police powers from commerce clause
Presumption of non-authority Presumption of authority
Only power to administer implied Power to obtain purpose implied
Prerogatory writs are 9th Amend. rights Prerogatory writs are obsolete
The above lists are far from complete, but they can serve as a basis for further discussion.
-- Jon
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I'm going to add a few indicators that seem correct to me:
1. RATE OF CHANGE
To which I would like to add the idea of ones degree of willingness or unwillingness to embrace change in different areas.
I'd thought that conservatives resisted change, or at least rapid change, that liberals favored reform (read: change), and that radicals sought rapid change, as in "uprooting" an institution. "Radical" comes from "root" as in radish, the munchy red root.
Check out Jon's site, above, and see whether you're sympathetic to his organization's take on Con-Law and life, or not. There are competing views on everything. Your job is to figure out where your sympathies lie, and more importantly, why.
2. ACCEPTANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY & WILLINGNESS TO FORGIVE.
Conservatives tend to place blame for acts, and resulting consequences, squarely on the individual.
As in, "You wouldn't have needed the abortion if you hadn't gotten pregnant which wouldn't have happened if you'd listened and abstained from sex before marriage. What you did was immoral, etc."
Liberals are more willing to relieve the individual of personal responsibility for choices producing costly or negative choices.
A conservative might argue that if you are convicted of a crime of moral turpitude, such as stealing, while young, this is ample ground for denying you a license to practice law in the future.
A liberal might argue that the crime was committed while the person was young and in the meantime he cleaned up his act, went to law school, did all the right things that we as a society want people to do, and thus we ought to be able to overlook youthful mistakes and allow the person to be licensed as a lawyer and to hold client funds in trust.
Conservatives may be less inclined to forgive and forget.
3. LIVE AND LET LIVE vs. SEARCH AND DESTROY
For the first seven years of my practice as a lawyer I served as an assistant district attorney, two years in one office and five years in the San Francisco District Attorneys Office, where my responsibilites included prosecuting the most serious of crimes, rape and murder, where the stakes were high and we dealt in years in prison.
It was important to make fine distinctions between one criminal defendant's conduct and criminal history and anothers. Among a few of my colleagues, we observed the members of the prosecutors office and concluded that we tended to fall into two general camps: Live and let live, and Search and Destroy.
The latter term was coined during the Vietnam War period when that described a military patrol into enemy territory.
The Live and Let Live types were more inclined to accept that there should be a reasonable limit to prison sentences such that the defendant, after serving his time, might make a life on the outside if so inclined.
Or we might be more inclined in a borderline prison case to opt for local time followed by probation.
The L&LL types might be more inclined to say, "There but for the grace of God go I."
The S&D folks motto is "If you commit the crime, you do the time." Three strikes is a doctrine of fed up conservative prosecutors.
4. CLOSURE
The prosecutor's goal is to get the conviction and close the case. He does not wish to do further work on a closed case. So he wants to eliminate any appeal. A plea of guilty is his best way to accomplish complete closure.
The prosecutor tends to be conservative concerning decided questions of guilt, whether guilt is found by plea or jury.
He wants the case to be over.
Liberals think, "Where there's life there's hope." Appeal after appeal, as in death penalty litigation, is fine with them. Negating the effects of the, to them, hated death penalty, for its barbarity and capriciousness, its delay and expense, justify the fact that more work is done post-conviction than pre-trial when it might have had better effect.
Nothing is ever closed for the liberal.
5. GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY
The conservative tends to place greater faith in established institutions, as in "Support Your Local Police," a slogan coined to counter the name calling of the late '60s, early '70s, of police officers as "Pigs." Smart cops adopted, and thus co-opted, the sobriquet by wearing "Pig" tie clips, etc. Cute.
Radical kids hurled the "Pig" epithet, objecting to government authority.
Government officials, such as police, prosecutors, and judges, are forced to rely on each other, whether reliance is fully warranted or not. For example, a sentencing judge imposes sentence based on what the jury found, regardless the claims of the convicted defendant about how unjust the conviction was. Prosecutors tend to believe police reports, fictional or not. If the cop writes it down, it must be true because cops can't lie, even when they might fudge. All searches are good. Well, most, anyway. Maybe the officer didn't realize there was a new decision that came down when he searched the car, the person, or the house, after knocking and announcing his identity and authority, of course.
So, the prisoner's lament:
"Why are you in prison?"
"Because my lawyer lost my case."
5. IMMEDIATE vs. ROOT CAUSES
Conservatives tend to see bad people as bad people.
Liberals wonder why the person is seen as bad. Maybe it's society's fault, or his parents.' He's depraved because he's deprived, as stated in West Side Story.
Conservatives want the police to sweep up the bad guys. Liberals want to go after the root causes. Conservatives think life is too short for that. Liberals think life is not worth living unless you go after the root causes.
6. BAD APPLES vs. TIP OF THE ICEBERG
NYPD Detective Edward Conlon, author of Blue Blood, is a Harvard educated cop who writes thoughtfully and well about what he sees around him. Concerning cops who screw up, he says two competing metaphors control the aftermath. They're either bad apples (the typical police view), or just the tip of the iceberg, the non-police view. Conservatives will deal with the bad apple. Liberals will ask what is it about the police culture that allows such a thing to happen. Since the police reflect the society that requires policing, and selects its members as police officers, liberals may look to society as a whole as being at fault.
7. AESOP'S FABLES
Aesop's Fables are object lesson stories from antiquity that stress virtues such as thrift, hard work, responsibility, avoidance of laziness and sour-grapes, and the like. Conservatives stress these verities. Liberals may be more inclined to recognize that some slippage is inevitable and to make individual allowances.
Currently, Pres. George W. Bush wishes to revamp the seventy-year-old Social Security Law. Should government recognize that many people will fail to save for their old age and tax them to provide Social Security payments in the future? Or should government treat adults like adults, free to save or spend as they wish. Aesop's Fables are being played out in national policy over Social Security.
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And then there's a
which asks a further set of questions illustrative of varying views on the political spectrum.