Law in Contemporary Society

View   r24  >  r23  ...
TheodoreSmith-FirstPaper 24 - 23 May 2008 - Main.TheodoreSmith
Line: 1 to 1
 
META TOPICPARENT name="FirstPaper%25"

Moral Distance and Procedural Legal Systems

Line: 31 to 31
 

Legal Roles and Procedural Justice

Changed:
<
<		A ruled based legal system further distances legal actions from outcomes by providing fixed roles and a normative ethical code to its actors. This aspect of procedural legal systems is particularly noticeable in the adversarial model of American law. A central assumption of this type of system is that a just outcome will tend to arise when each legal actor is effectively performing his or her role in the overall legal process. This assumption, that the system is responsible for the justice (or injustice) of the outcome, has the potential to provide an easy moral scapegoat for the individuals within. Because American legal professionals are encouraged to believe in the efficacy of procedural justice, and because they are bound by an ethical code to zealously perform the duties of their role, it becomes easier to shrug off personally distasteful consequences. Although it should not be implied that individuals in these roles have no eye for the overall just outcome of the system, the focus on procedural rather than substantive justice has the potential to provide an easy moral justification.
>
>		A formal legal system further distances legal actions from outcomes by providing fixed roles and a normative ethical code to its actors. This aspect of procedural legal systems is particularly noticeable in the adversarial model of American law. A central assumption of this type of system is that a just outcome will tend to arise when each legal actor is effectively performing his or her role in the overall legal process. This position, that the system is responsible for the justice (or injustice) of the outcome, has the potential to provide an easy moral scapegoat for the individuals within. Because American legal professionals are encouraged to believe in the efficacy of procedural justice, and because they are bound by an ethical code to zealously perform the duties of their role, it becomes easier to shrug off personally distasteful consequences. Although it should not be implied that individuals in these roles have no eye for the overall just outcome of the system, the focus on procedural rather than substantive justice has the potential to provide easy moral justifications.
 

The Constraints of Procedure


Revision 24r24 - 23 May 2008 - 02:48:28 - TheodoreSmith
Revision 23r23 - 21 May 2008 - 08:06:07 - TheodoreSmith
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
Syndicate this site RSSATOM