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SoYeonKimFirstPaper 7 - 13 Aug 2012 - Main.EbenMoglen
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| | | Law as a Labyrinth | |
<
< | It is near impossible for laymen to access and make sense of vast bodies of statutes, ordinances, and regulations without legal assistance. The adverse social impact of the difficulty of understanding the law is aggravated by the rule of ignorantia juris non excusat. This legal principle may have made sense in the past when almost all laws proscribed conduct malum in se. Even an amoral prohibition like tax laws had a long history of acceptance as being part of a social compact in which benefits by the government were offered for a fee charged to citizens. However, an overwhelming array of laws now proscribes conduct malum prohibitum, outlawing morally neutral acts with seemingly weak justification. Moral compass no longer protects the uneducated poor. Defenders of this archaic doctrine say that it is a rule of fairness, preventing people from avoiding the consequences of their crimes by claiming ignorance. To me, it seems more like a rule of economy in which the system punishes those who commit crimes in a structure where precise knowledge of the law is impossible and presumes guilt because the alternative would require the court to make time consuming determinations as to the merits of people’s defenses. The perpetuation of this rule is condoning violation of the fundamental right to fair trial for sake of modest economy or a distorted sense of fairness. | >
> | It is near impossible for laymen to access and make sense of vast bodies of statutes, ordinances, and regulations without legal assistance. The adverse social impact of the difficulty of understanding the law is aggravated by the rule of ignorantia juris non excusat. This legal principle may have made sense in the past when almost all laws proscribed conduct malum in se. Even an amoral prohibition like tax laws had a long history of acceptance as being part of a social compact in which benefits by the government were offered for a fee charged to citizens. | | | | |
<
< | Whatever the rationale behind this rule, it has disproportionately targeted the poor. The rich are less affected by the difficulty of knowing the law because they are financially capable of hiring lawyers to tell them what is illegal ex ante, and at least diligently represent them ex post. This problem is compounded by the courts’ inability to accommodate the poor. Like in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, procedural mechanisms make trials incomprehensible and interminable; consuming what little wealth the poor have at a much faster rate than they did Jarndyce’s estate. To illustrate, the mean time it takes for a federal court to rule on a Rule 12 motion in a civil trial is 130 days and about a third of civil cases take more than a year to resolve, long enough to consume the savings of someone who makes $7.25 per hour. The indigent are further prevented from meaningfully defending themselves because the courts are not trained to listen to their way of speaking. The indigent speak in colloquial terms and often evoke emotion and convictions to persuade. The courts, trained in the deductive thinking, are unreceptive to this kind of narrative and find it unpersuasive. | >
> | What has that to do with
anything?
However, an overwhelming array of laws now proscribes conduct malum prohibitum, outlawing morally neutral acts with seemingly weak justification. Moral compass no longer protects the uneducated poor.
This all seems to depend on the idea that large numbers of poor
people are either prosecuted for breaking laws they didn't know
existed, or are held liable for damages as a result of legal rules
they didn't know about. These don't seem to me, as I said last time,
the primary or even significant forms of the law's bias against the
poor. Some evidence, or even examples, would be helpful.
Defenders of this archaic doctrine say that it is a rule of fairness, preventing people from avoiding the consequences of their crimes by claiming ignorance.
I don't understand why the principle is archaic because it's old.
Indeed, there's no complex society anywhere functioning on the basis
that the obligation to obey the law always depends on actual knowledge.
To me, it seems more like a rule of economy in which the system punishes those who commit crimes in a structure where precise knowledge of the law is impossible and presumes guilt because the alternative would require the court to make time consuming determinations as to the merits of people’s defenses.
Given the large number
of criminal statutes with specific mental state requirements, it's
hard to see what this adds. Does it somehow reduce the justice of a
conviction for robbery that the defendant intended to commit theft
with violence or menacing, but didn't know the number of the penal
code section being violated? Or that the defendant knowingly
submitted false mortgage application paperwork for an FHA-guaranteed
loan, but didn't know that this constituted federal mortgage
fraud?
The perpetuation of this rule is condoning violation of the fundamental right to fair trial for sake of modest economy or a distorted sense of fairness.
Whatever the rationale behind this rule, it has disproportionately targeted the poor. The rich are less affected by the difficulty of knowing the law because they are financially capable of hiring lawyers to tell them what is illegal ex ante, and at least diligently represent them ex post. This problem is compounded by the courts’ inability to accommodate the poor. Like in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, procedural mechanisms make trials incomprehensible and interminable; consuming what little wealth the poor have at a much faster rate than they did Jarndyce’s estate. To illustrate, the mean time it takes for a federal court to rule on a Rule 12 motion in a civil trial is 130 days and about a third of civil cases take more than a year to resolve, long enough to consume the savings of someone who makes $7.25 per hour.
I don't understand how
we know the rate at which a party's wages are being consumed because
a litigation hasn't ended. What's the relationship between the time
it takes to finish a lawsuit and the wages of the plaintiff?
The indigent are further prevented from meaningfully defending themselves because the courts are not trained to listen to their way of speaking. The indigent speak in colloquial terms and often evoke emotion and convictions to persuade. The courts, trained in the deductive thinking, are unreceptive to this kind of narrative and find it unpersuasive.
But these questions have
to do not with the rule that ignorance isn't an excuse, but with
every form of litigation in which laypeople, rich and poor, represent
themselves. How does that further the argument you are
making? | | | Madison recognized in Federalist No. 62 that “ [laws] will be of little avail to the people, . . . if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; . . . or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.” But his insight did not change the system. Despite the efforts of David Dudley Field in simplifying civil procedure and eliminating formalized and verbose pleading requirements, subsequent modifications and additions in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and state civil codes largely reversed those efforts. | |
>
> |
Really? Notice pleading under FRCP is less simple than pleading
under the Field Code? Who told you so?
| | | Lawyers as Ariadne’s String
The legal profession should be Ariadne’s string guiding the indigent through the legal maze. This is so because slaying the Minotaur by abolishing the legal system creates chaos and disorder, and rebuilding the labyrinth by remaking the legal landscape is difficult because the indigent are not meaningful constituencies to politicians who monopolize the power to change. | |
<
< | However, the reality is not encouraging. There is a massive shortage of lawyers willing to represent the poor. Public defenders only represent those charged with crimes, who represent only a portion of the indigent in need of legal services. Public interest groups are also selective in choosing their clients as they are issue-focused and represent defendants who will further their social agenda. Private lawyers, a shockingly low proportion of whom meet even the 50-hour recommendation for mandatory pro bono work, never represent the indigent against large corporations, their potential clientele. Finally, the Legal Services Corporation, the largest provider of civil legal aid funding for the poor in the country, is the easiest target for congressional budget cuts. Nonprofit legal advice programs nationwide experienced a $72 million cut in funding from Congress since 2010 and the LSC anticipates 393 staff reductions in 2012. All these mechanisms are underfunded and understaffed, and in this respect, Ariadne’s string is too short to be useful. | >
> | However, the reality is not encouraging. There is a massive shortage of lawyers willing to represent the poor. Public defenders only represent those charged with crimes, who represent only a portion of the indigent in need of legal services. Public interest groups are also selective in choosing their clients as they are issue-focused and represent defendants who will further their social agenda. Private lawyers, a shockingly low proportion of whom meet even the 50-hour recommendation for mandatory pro bono work, never represent the indigent against large corporations, their potential clientele.
Never isn't what I said, and isn't right. You're losing precision.
Finally, the Legal Services Corporation, the largest provider of civil legal aid funding for the poor in the country, is the easiest target for congressional budget cuts. Nonprofit legal advice programs nationwide experienced a $72 million cut in funding from Congress since 2010 and the LSC anticipates 393 staff reductions in 2012. All these mechanisms are underfunded and understaffed, and in this respect, Ariadne’s string is too short to be useful.
This makes it sound as though LSC actually functions. You haven't
described the real reasons why it doesn't. (Like the prohibition on
bringing class actions, or other forms of litigation that would
advance the interests of the poor, as opposed to helping individual
poor people.)
| | | The Minotaur
Unlike the myth, here the Minotaur is the product of the labyrinth. A consequence of legal illiteracy is the systematic bias against the indigent manifested through higher rates of arrests and convictions, longer prison sentences, and denial of parol. In civil proceedings, the poor are more likely to be found liable because of their inability to effectively defend themselves. It seems that instead of perpetuating a default rule based on a depressing view of humanity in which people will fabricate excuses to avoid liability, the profession should have a little more faith in the legal system’s ability to determine meaningful factors through discovery and trial. Also, by making statutes more accessible and investing in legal education for the masses, use of the ignorance excuse could be kept to a minimum. A trial is every person’s forum to assert that his case is unique. In a reformed system, people will not be held responsible despite the impossibility of knowing the law, but rather, have a chance to prove that they in fact should be excused. | |
>
> |
The problem remains an odd choice of scale of generality. That the
legal system reflects the pervasive inequality of the society takes
little argument: every legal system reflects inequality as it
reflects the other characteristics of the society around it. That we
are a highly unequal society, oligarchic rather than democratic in
structure, is also evident, though it is rarely acknowledged. So the
law is inherently reflective not only of inequality, but of the
intentional savagery of that inequality: we are kind to the rich and
we are at best just to the poor.
But to say that this is primarily the result of the rule that
ignorance is no excuse from legal duties, or that legal inequality
can be fixed without change in social structure solely by eliminating
this principle, present in democratic as well as oligarchic regimes,
seems fanciful. It's almost as though you didn't want to complete
the thought: legal bias against the poor is an outcome, not a
byproduct that can be altered within the system that creates it.
Democracy, that is rule by the poor, would produce a legal system
with different biases. If we are not to change the social system, we
should not expect the legal system to become in any fundamental
respect different.
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SoYeonKimFirstPaper 6 - 13 May 2012 - Main.SoYeonKim
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Law as a Labyrinth for the Indigent | |
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< | (to be edited further) | | | -- By SoYeonKim - 14 Feb 2012
Daedalus' edifice imprisoning the Minotaur was at least a unicursal labyrinth with a single non-branching pathway leading to the center. Theseus only needed a ball of string to find his way back out. The poor are not so fortunate. For them, the law is a multicursal maze designed to be as difficult to navigate as possible.
Law as a Labyrinth | |
<
< | What makes law a labyrinth? It is near impossible for laymen to access and make sense of vast bodies of statutes, ordinances, and regulations without legal assistance. The adverse social impact of the difficulty of understanding the law is aggravated by the rule of ignorantia juris non excusat. This legal principle that ignorance of the law does not excuse liability for violating it may have made some sense in the past when almost all laws proscribed conduct malum in se. Even the few prohibited conduct void of morality like tax law had a long history of acceptance in that they were part of a social compact in which the public benefits offered by the government were to be exchanged with a fee was charged to the citizens. | | | | |
<
< | However, an overwhelming array of laws now proscribes conduct malum prohibitum and outlaws morally neutral acts with seemingly weak justification. Moral compass no longer protects the uneducated poor. Defenders of this archaic doctrine would say that it is a rule of fairness. It prevents people from avoiding the consequences of their crimes by claiming ignorance. To me, it seems more like a rule of economy in which the system punishes those who commit crimes in a structure where precise knowledge of the law is impossible and presumes fault because the alternative would require the court to make time consuming and difficult determinations as to the merits of people’s defenses. The perpetuation of this rule is condoning violation of fundamental principles of right to fair trial for sake of modest economy or a distorted sense of fairness. | >
> | It is near impossible for laymen to access and make sense of vast bodies of statutes, ordinances, and regulations without legal assistance. The adverse social impact of the difficulty of understanding the law is aggravated by the rule of ignorantia juris non excusat. This legal principle may have made sense in the past when almost all laws proscribed conduct malum in se. Even an amoral prohibition like tax laws had a long history of acceptance as being part of a social compact in which benefits by the government were offered for a fee charged to citizens. However, an overwhelming array of laws now proscribes conduct malum prohibitum, outlawing morally neutral acts with seemingly weak justification. Moral compass no longer protects the uneducated poor. Defenders of this archaic doctrine say that it is a rule of fairness, preventing people from avoiding the consequences of their crimes by claiming ignorance. To me, it seems more like a rule of economy in which the system punishes those who commit crimes in a structure where precise knowledge of the law is impossible and presumes guilt because the alternative would require the court to make time consuming determinations as to the merits of people’s defenses. The perpetuation of this rule is condoning violation of the fundamental right to fair trial for sake of modest economy or a distorted sense of fairness. | | | | |
<
< | Whatever the rationale behind this rule, it has disproportionately targeted the poor. The rich are less affected by the difficulty of knowing the law because they are financially capable of hiring lawyers to tell them what is legal and illegal ex ante, and at least diligently represent them ex post. For the uneducated, knowing the law requires more than going to the local law library and reading statutes. Statutes are full of terms of art like “consideration,” “reasonable,” and “firearm,” that mislead readers with their counterintuitive legal definitions. The problem is compounded by the fact that once they disobey the law they could not possibly have known, the courts are not favorable in the judgment of the indigent. Like in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the legal process and the technical procedural mechanisms make trials incomprehensible, arcane, and interminable; “becom[ing] so complicated that no man alive knows what it means” and consuming what little wealth they have at a much faster rate than it did Jarndyce’s estate. http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=2396481&pageno=5
The indigent are further deprived of meaningfully defending themselves because the courts are not trained to listen to their way of speaking. The indigent speak in informal layman's terms and often evoke emotion and convictions to persuade. The courts, trained in the deductive thinking, are unreceptive to this kind of narratives and do not find it persuasive. Also, opinions and hearsay are barred by evidentiary restrictions.
Madison recognized in Federalist No. 62 that “ [laws] will be of little avail to the people, . . . if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.” But his insight did not change the system. In fact, despite the efforts of the highly influential Field Code in simplifying civil procedure and eliminating formalized and verbose pleading requirements, the subsequent modifications and additions in the federal rules of civil procedure and state civil codes, largely reversed the efforts to simplify. | >
> | Whatever the rationale behind this rule, it has disproportionately targeted the poor. The rich are less affected by the difficulty of knowing the law because they are financially capable of hiring lawyers to tell them what is illegal ex ante, and at least diligently represent them ex post. This problem is compounded by the courts’ inability to accommodate the poor. Like in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, procedural mechanisms make trials incomprehensible and interminable; consuming what little wealth the poor have at a much faster rate than they did Jarndyce’s estate. To illustrate, the mean time it takes for a federal court to rule on a Rule 12 motion in a civil trial is 130 days and about a third of civil cases take more than a year to resolve, long enough to consume the savings of someone who makes $7.25 per hour. The indigent are further prevented from meaningfully defending themselves because the courts are not trained to listen to their way of speaking. The indigent speak in colloquial terms and often evoke emotion and convictions to persuade. The courts, trained in the deductive thinking, are unreceptive to this kind of narrative and find it unpersuasive. | | | | |
>
> | Madison recognized in Federalist No. 62 that “ [laws] will be of little avail to the people, . . . if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; . . . or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.” But his insight did not change the system. Despite the efforts of David Dudley Field in simplifying civil procedure and eliminating formalized and verbose pleading requirements, subsequent modifications and additions in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and state civil codes largely reversed those efforts. | | | Lawyers as Ariadne’s String | |
<
< | So what is the legal profession’s role in this quandary? We want lawyers to be Ariadne’s string guiding the indigent and uneducated through the legal maze (although the analogy is somewhat strained, as Ariadne’s string was meant to help Theseus escape the labyrinth, not to navigate it). This is so because slaying the Minotaur by abolishing the legal system is an unrealistic avenue of recourse and exposes the indigent to more criminal and civil sanctions and rebuilding the labyrinth by remaking the legal landscape is difficult because the indigent are not meaningful constituencies to politicians who monopolize on the power to change.
The reality is not very encouraging. It seems that the legal profession is complacent because it feeds on this ignorance of the masses. The predicament is exacerbated by the massive shortage of lawyers willing to represent the poor for free. Public defenders only represent those charged with crimes, who represent only a portion of the indigent adversely affected by the law. Public interest groups are also selective in choosing their clients as they are issue-focused and only represent defendants who will further their social agenda. Private lawyers fulfilling mandatory pro bono requirements, a shockingly low proportion of whom meet even the minimal 50 hour recommendation due to escalating requirements for billable hours, never represent the indigent against large corporations, their potential clientele. Finally, the Legal Services Corporation, the largest provider of civil legal aid funding for the poor in the country is the easiest target for congressional budget cuts. Nonprofit legal advice programs nationwide experienced a $72 million cut in funding from Congress since 2010 and the Legal Services Corporation anticipates 393 more staff reductions in 2012. All these mechanisms are underfunded and understaffed, and in this respect, Ariadne’s string is far too short to be useful. | >
> | The legal profession should be Ariadne’s string guiding the indigent through the legal maze. This is so because slaying the Minotaur by abolishing the legal system creates chaos and disorder, and rebuilding the labyrinth by remaking the legal landscape is difficult because the indigent are not meaningful constituencies to politicians who monopolize the power to change.
However, the reality is not encouraging. There is a massive shortage of lawyers willing to represent the poor. Public defenders only represent those charged with crimes, who represent only a portion of the indigent in need of legal services. Public interest groups are also selective in choosing their clients as they are issue-focused and represent defendants who will further their social agenda. Private lawyers, a shockingly low proportion of whom meet even the 50-hour recommendation for mandatory pro bono work, never represent the indigent against large corporations, their potential clientele. Finally, the Legal Services Corporation, the largest provider of civil legal aid funding for the poor in the country, is the easiest target for congressional budget cuts. Nonprofit legal advice programs nationwide experienced a $72 million cut in funding from Congress since 2010 and the LSC anticipates 393 staff reductions in 2012. All these mechanisms are underfunded and understaffed, and in this respect, Ariadne’s string is too short to be useful. | | | The Minotaur | |
<
< | A consequence of legal illiteracy is the systematic bias in the legal system against the indigent manifested through higher rates of arrest, charges, convictions, long prison sentences and denial of parol. In civil proceedings, the poor are unable to find legal representation and pay damages and fines. Unlike the myth, here the Minotaur is the product of the labyrinth. While the potential causes for this bias and the corresponding solutions are too numerous to discuss, for the purposes of this essay, I would argue that instead of perpetuating a default rule based on a depressing view of humanity in which people will lie and fabricate excuses to avoid liability, the profession should have a little more faith in the legal system’s ability to determine meaningful factors through discovery and trial. Instead of expecting the uneducated poor to know what the system has made virtually impossible for them to know, by couching the law in layman’s terms, making statutes more accessible, investing in legal education for the masses, and actively publicizing laws, excessive use of the ignorance excuse could be kept to a minimum. While there are always settled legal rules, a trial is every person’s forum to assert that his case is unique. In a reformed system, people will not be held responsible despite the impossibility of knowing the law, but rather have a chance to prove that they in fact should be excused. | >
> | Unlike the myth, here the Minotaur is the product of the labyrinth. A consequence of legal illiteracy is the systematic bias against the indigent manifested through higher rates of arrests and convictions, longer prison sentences, and denial of parol. In civil proceedings, the poor are more likely to be found liable because of their inability to effectively defend themselves. It seems that instead of perpetuating a default rule based on a depressing view of humanity in which people will fabricate excuses to avoid liability, the profession should have a little more faith in the legal system’s ability to determine meaningful factors through discovery and trial. Also, by making statutes more accessible and investing in legal education for the masses, use of the ignorance excuse could be kept to a minimum. A trial is every person’s forum to assert that his case is unique. In a reformed system, people will not be held responsible despite the impossibility of knowing the law, but rather, have a chance to prove that they in fact should be excused. |
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SoYeonKimFirstPaper 5 - 24 Apr 2012 - Main.SoYeonKim
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Law as a Labyrinth for the Indigent | |
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< | | >
> | (to be edited further) | | | -- By SoYeonKim - 14 Feb 2012 | |
<
< | Daedalus’ edifice imprisoning the Minotaur was at least a unicursal labyrinth with a single non-branching pathway leading to the center. Theseus only needed a ball of string to find his way back out. The poor are not so fortunate. For them, the law is a multicursal maze designed to be as difficult to navigate as possible.
Indeed. That's because
the labyrinth on Crete was supposed to admit a hero who could return
again: it was built to fail. The prison that encloses the poor is
built to succeed forever. | >
> | Daedalus' edifice imprisoning the Minotaur was at least a unicursal labyrinth with a single non-branching pathway leading to the center. Theseus only needed a ball of string to find his way back out. The poor are not so fortunate. For them, the law is a multicursal maze designed to be as difficult to navigate as possible. | | | Law as a Labyrinth | |
<
< | What makes law a labyrinth? It is near impossible for laymen to access and make sense of vast bodies of
statutes, ordinances, and regulations without legal assistance. The
adverse social impact of the difficulty of understanding the law is
aggravated by the rule of ignorantia juris non excusat. This legal
principle that ignorance of the law does not excuse liability for
violating it may have made some sense in the past when almost all laws
proscribed conduct malum in se
When was there a time
that there was no tax law, or that ignorance of tax law consisted
relief from its imposition? You're not offering legal history,
you're making it up.
However, an overwhelming array of laws now proscribes conduct
malum prohibitum and outlaws morally neutral acts. Moral compass no
longer protects the uneducated poor. Defenders of this archaic
doctrine would say that it is a rule of fairness. It prevents people
from avoiding the consequences of their crimes by claiming
ignorance. To me, it seems more like a rule of economy in which the
system punishes those who commit crimes in a structure where precise
knowledge of the law is impossible and presumes fault because the
alternative would require the court to make time consuming and
difficult determinations as to the merits of people’s
defenses. The perpetuation of this rule is condoning violation of
fundamental principles of right to fair trial for sake of modest
economy or a distorted sense of fairness.
Whatever the rationale behind this rule, it has disproportionately targeted the poor. The rich are less affected by the difficulty of knowing the law because they are financially capable of hiring lawyers to tell them what is legal and illegal ex ante, and at least diligently represent them ex post. For the uneducated, knowing the law requires more than going to the local law library and reading statutes. Statutes are full of terms of art like “consideration,” “reasonable,” and “firearm,” that mislead readers with their counterintuitive legal definitions. Instead of expecting the uneducated poor to know what the system has made virtually impossible for them to know, by couching the law in layman’s terms, making statutes more accessible, investing in legal education for the masses, and actively publicizing laws, excessive use of this excuse could be kept to a minimum.
This line of argument,
however accurate, is important in proportion to the extent that the
bars in the cell doors of the poor are made of laws they rush against
in ignorance. You haven't explained why this is most, or even much,
of the legal unfairness experienced by the poor. Other aspects of
the legal system come much more to mind, at least for me, whether I
am thinking about J.M. Kelly's description of Roman civil procedure,
or Bleak House, or Conley & O'Barr on American small claims court process.
Madison recognized in Federalist No. 62 that “ [laws] will be of little avail to the people, . . . if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.” But his insight did not change the system. Instead what we have are Caligula’s laws written in the columns of high buildings, indecipherable and impossible to reach.
Well, allowing for the
fact that Caligula's laws hardly emerged in response to a comment by
James Madison. What did emerge were the efforts of the codification
movement in the US in the nineteenth century , including the writings
of Theodore Sedgwick and Robert Rantoul, with which you might want to
become familiar, and the codes of David Dudley Field, with which New
York law students used to have some experience, and which none of
your teachers could distinguish from the Code of Hammurabi at
twenty-five paces. | >
> | What makes law a labyrinth? It is near impossible for laymen to access and make sense of vast bodies of statutes, ordinances, and regulations without legal assistance. The adverse social impact of the difficulty of understanding the law is aggravated by the rule of ignorantia juris non excusat. This legal principle that ignorance of the law does not excuse liability for violating it may have made some sense in the past when almost all laws proscribed conduct malum in se. Even the few prohibited conduct void of morality like tax law had a long history of acceptance in that they were part of a social compact in which the public benefits offered by the government were to be exchanged with a fee was charged to the citizens. | | | | |
<
< | Lawyers as Ariadne’s String
So what is the legal profession’s role in this quandary? We want lawyers to be Ariadne’s string guiding the indigent and uneducated through the legal maze (although the analogy is somewhat strained, as Ariadne’s string was meant to help Theseus escape the labyrinth, not to navigate it.). | >
> | However, an overwhelming array of laws now proscribes conduct malum prohibitum and outlaws morally neutral acts with seemingly weak justification. Moral compass no longer protects the uneducated poor. Defenders of this archaic doctrine would say that it is a rule of fairness. It prevents people from avoiding the consequences of their crimes by claiming ignorance. To me, it seems more like a rule of economy in which the system punishes those who commit crimes in a structure where precise knowledge of the law is impossible and presumes fault because the alternative would require the court to make time consuming and difficult determinations as to the merits of people’s defenses. The perpetuation of this rule is condoning violation of fundamental principles of right to fair trial for sake of modest economy or a distorted sense of fairness. | | | | |
<
< | And you couldn't
possibly want to help the poor escape, by slaying the Minotaur (that
would be terrorism) and remaking the legal landscape (that would be
socialism). Right?
The reality is not very encouraging. It seems that the legal profession is complacent because it feeds on this ignorance of the masses. Ignorance of the law creates demand and drives up the price of legal services, although the effect that legal illiteracy of the indigent has on the price of legal services is minimal. The predicament is exacerbated by the massive shortage of lawyers willing to represent the poor. For those who are too poor to afford a private attorney, the options boil down to publicly funded public defenders, public interest groups, and private lawyers fulfilling mandatory pro bono requirements. All three mechanisms are underfunded and understaffed, and according to Building a Better Legal Profession, although large law firms have the most resources at hand to meet the demand for pro bono legal work, escalating requirements for billable hours lead to a declining commitment to pro bono work and “a shockingly low proportion of lawyers at large firms meet even the minimal 50 hour recommendation.” In this respect, Ariadne’s string is far too short and thin to be useful.
See
SkylarPolanskyFirstPaper for a closer inquiry on these last points.
But you're exaggerating the resources of the poor. Public defenders
only represent poor people when they are charged with crimes, which
is a small part of labyrinth imprisoning the poor. Most legal
services organizations acting in the public interest are
issues-focused organizations like mine, forming relations with
clients in specific social contexts in order to further larger social
aims. The provision of basic civil legal assistance to the poor,
which was envisioned as an important part of Lyndon Johnson's
anti-poverty initiative, the Great Society, was rapidly destroyed by
the succeeding Republican government under Richard Nixon, and the
Legal Services Corporation rapidly faded into the network of
"underfunded and understaffed" specialist organizations you mention
but don't discuss. Large law firm pro bono practices are bound to
prevent conflicts of interest with their firm's clients, and will
never therefore engage in widespread efforts on behalf of poor
clients against banks, real estate developers, industrial polluters,
etc. | >
> | Whatever the rationale behind this rule, it has disproportionately targeted the poor. The rich are less affected by the difficulty of knowing the law because they are financially capable of hiring lawyers to tell them what is legal and illegal ex ante, and at least diligently represent them ex post. For the uneducated, knowing the law requires more than going to the local law library and reading statutes. Statutes are full of terms of art like “consideration,” “reasonable,” and “firearm,” that mislead readers with their counterintuitive legal definitions. The problem is compounded by the fact that once they disobey the law they could not possibly have known, the courts are not favorable in the judgment of the indigent. Like in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the legal process and the technical procedural mechanisms make trials incomprehensible, arcane, and interminable; “becom[ing] so complicated that no man alive knows what it means” and consuming what little wealth they have at a much faster rate than it did Jarndyce’s estate. http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=2396481&pageno=5 | | | | |
<
< | | >
> | The indigent are further deprived of meaningfully defending themselves because the courts are not trained to listen to their way of speaking. The indigent speak in informal layman's terms and often evoke emotion and convictions to persuade. The courts, trained in the deductive thinking, are unreceptive to this kind of narratives and do not find it persuasive. Also, opinions and hearsay are barred by evidentiary restrictions.
Madison recognized in Federalist No. 62 that “ [laws] will be of little avail to the people, . . . if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.” But his insight did not change the system. In fact, despite the efforts of the highly influential Field Code in simplifying civil procedure and eliminating formalized and verbose pleading requirements, the subsequent modifications and additions in the federal rules of civil procedure and state civil codes, largely reversed the efforts to simplify. | | | | |
<
< | The Minotaur
A consequence of legal illiteracy is the systematic bias in the legal system against the indigent manifested through higher rates of arrest, charges, convictions, long prison sentences and denial of parol. | | | | |
<
< | Here, too, an emphasis
on criminal process leads to an underestimate of the real barriers
enclosing the poor.
Unlike the myth, here the Minotaur is the product of the labyrinth. While the potential causes for this bias and the corresponding solutions are too numerous to discuss, for the purposes of this essay, I would argue that instead of perpetuating a default rule based on a depressing view of humanity in which people will lie and fabricate excuses to avoid liability, the profession should have a little more faith in the legal system’s ability to determine meaningful factors through discovery and trial. Investment in basic legal education and increasing the accessibility of laws will help prevent the abuse of the ignorance excuse. While there are always settled legal rules, a trial is every person’s forum to assert that his case is unique. In a reformed system, people will not be held responsible despite the impossibility of knowing the law, but rather have a chance to prove that they in fact should be excused.
I've indicated in my
comments above the places where I think some further effort would
result in improvement of the draft, which overall is both clearly
argued and sophisticatedly expressed. | >
> | Lawyers as Ariadne’s String
So what is the legal profession’s role in this quandary? We want lawyers to be Ariadne’s string guiding the indigent and uneducated through the legal maze (although the analogy is somewhat strained, as Ariadne’s string was meant to help Theseus escape the labyrinth, not to navigate it). This is so because slaying the Minotaur by abolishing the legal system is an unrealistic avenue of recourse and exposes the indigent to more criminal and civil sanctions and rebuilding the labyrinth by remaking the legal landscape is difficult because the indigent are not meaningful constituencies to politicians who monopolize on the power to change.
The reality is not very encouraging. It seems that the legal profession is complacent because it feeds on this ignorance of the masses. The predicament is exacerbated by the massive shortage of lawyers willing to represent the poor for free. Public defenders only represent those charged with crimes, who represent only a portion of the indigent adversely affected by the law. Public interest groups are also selective in choosing their clients as they are issue-focused and only represent defendants who will further their social agenda. Private lawyers fulfilling mandatory pro bono requirements, a shockingly low proportion of whom meet even the minimal 50 hour recommendation due to escalating requirements for billable hours, never represent the indigent against large corporations, their potential clientele. Finally, the Legal Services Corporation, the largest provider of civil legal aid funding for the poor in the country is the easiest target for congressional budget cuts. Nonprofit legal advice programs nationwide experienced a $72 million cut in funding from Congress since 2010 and the Legal Services Corporation anticipates 393 more staff reductions in 2012. All these mechanisms are underfunded and understaffed, and in this respect, Ariadne’s string is far too short to be useful.
The Minotaur
A consequence of legal illiteracy is the systematic bias in the legal system against the indigent manifested through higher rates of arrest, charges, convictions, long prison sentences and denial of parol. In civil proceedings, the poor are unable to find legal representation and pay damages and fines. Unlike the myth, here the Minotaur is the product of the labyrinth. While the potential causes for this bias and the corresponding solutions are too numerous to discuss, for the purposes of this essay, I would argue that instead of perpetuating a default rule based on a depressing view of humanity in which people will lie and fabricate excuses to avoid liability, the profession should have a little more faith in the legal system’s ability to determine meaningful factors through discovery and trial. Instead of expecting the uneducated poor to know what the system has made virtually impossible for them to know, by couching the law in layman’s terms, making statutes more accessible, investing in legal education for the masses, and actively publicizing laws, excessive use of the ignorance excuse could be kept to a minimum. While there are always settled legal rules, a trial is every person’s forum to assert that his case is unique. In a reformed system, people will not be held responsible despite the impossibility of knowing the law, but rather have a chance to prove that they in fact should be excused. |
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SoYeonKimFirstPaper 4 - 17 Apr 2012 - Main.SoYeonKim
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| | | again: it was built to fail. The prison that encloses the poor is
built to succeed forever. | |
<
< | Law as a Labyrinth What makes law a labyrinth? It is near
impossible for laymen to access and make sense of vast bodies of | >
> | Law as a Labyrinth
What makes law a labyrinth? It is near impossible for laymen to access and make sense of vast bodies of | | | statutes, ordinances, and regulations without legal assistance. The
adverse social impact of the difficulty of understanding the law is
aggravated by the rule of ignorantia juris non excusat. This legal
principle that ignorance of the law does not excuse liability for
violating it may have made some sense in the past when almost all laws | |
<
< | proscribed conduct <span style="background-color: #cc6688; color:
yellow; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px">[was] _malum in
se_. | >
> | proscribed conduct malum in se | | | When was there a time
that there was no tax law, or that ignorance of tax law consisted |
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SoYeonKimFirstPaper 3 - 14 Apr 2012 - Main.EbenMoglen
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| | | Daedalus’ edifice imprisoning the Minotaur was at least a unicursal labyrinth with a single non-branching pathway leading to the center. Theseus only needed a ball of string to find his way back out. The poor are not so fortunate. For them, the law is a multicursal maze designed to be as difficult to navigate as possible. | |
<
< | Law as a Labyrinth
What makes law a labyrinth? It is near impossible for laymen to access and make sense of vast bodies of statutes, ordinances, and regulations without legal assistance. The adverse social impact of the difficulty of understanding the law is aggravated by the rule of ignorantia juris non excusat. This legal principle that ignorance of the law does not excuse liability for violating it may have made some sense in the past when almost all laws proscribed conduct malum in se. However, an overwhelming array of laws now proscribes conduct malum prohibitum and outlaws morally neutral acts. Moral compass no longer protects the uneducated poor. Defenders of this archaic doctrine would say that it is a rule of fairness. It prevents people from avoiding the consequences of their crimes by claiming ignorance. To me, it seems more like a rule of economy in which the system punishes those who commit crimes in a structure where precise knowledge of the law is impossible and presumes fault because the alternative would require the court to make time consuming and difficult determinations as to the merits of people’s defenses. The perpetuation of this rule is condoning violation of fundamental principles of right to fair trial for sake of modest economy or a distorted sense of fairness. | >
> | Indeed. That's because
the labyrinth on Crete was supposed to admit a hero who could return
again: it was built to fail. The prison that encloses the poor is
built to succeed forever.
Law as a Labyrinth What makes law a labyrinth? It is near
impossible for laymen to access and make sense of vast bodies of
statutes, ordinances, and regulations without legal assistance. The
adverse social impact of the difficulty of understanding the law is
aggravated by the rule of ignorantia juris non excusat. This legal
principle that ignorance of the law does not excuse liability for
violating it may have made some sense in the past when almost all laws
proscribed conduct <span style="background-color: #cc6688; color:
yellow; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px">[was] _malum in
se_.
When was there a time
that there was no tax law, or that ignorance of tax law consisted
relief from its imposition? You're not offering legal history,
you're making it up.
However, an overwhelming array of laws now proscribes conduct
malum prohibitum and outlaws morally neutral acts. Moral compass no
longer protects the uneducated poor. Defenders of this archaic
doctrine would say that it is a rule of fairness. It prevents people
from avoiding the consequences of their crimes by claiming
ignorance. To me, it seems more like a rule of economy in which the
system punishes those who commit crimes in a structure where precise
knowledge of the law is impossible and presumes fault because the
alternative would require the court to make time consuming and
difficult determinations as to the merits of people’s
defenses. The perpetuation of this rule is condoning violation of
fundamental principles of right to fair trial for sake of modest
economy or a distorted sense of fairness. | | | Whatever the rationale behind this rule, it has disproportionately targeted the poor. The rich are less affected by the difficulty of knowing the law because they are financially capable of hiring lawyers to tell them what is legal and illegal ex ante, and at least diligently represent them ex post. For the uneducated, knowing the law requires more than going to the local law library and reading statutes. Statutes are full of terms of art like “consideration,” “reasonable,” and “firearm,” that mislead readers with their counterintuitive legal definitions. Instead of expecting the uneducated poor to know what the system has made virtually impossible for them to know, by couching the law in layman’s terms, making statutes more accessible, investing in legal education for the masses, and actively publicizing laws, excessive use of this excuse could be kept to a minimum. | |
>
> | This line of argument,
however accurate, is important in proportion to the extent that the
bars in the cell doors of the poor are made of laws they rush against
in ignorance. You haven't explained why this is most, or even much,
of the legal unfairness experienced by the poor. Other aspects of
the legal system come much more to mind, at least for me, whether I
am thinking about J.M. Kelly's description of Roman civil procedure,
or Bleak House, or Conley & O'Barr on American small claims court process. | | | Madison recognized in Federalist No. 62 that “ [laws] will be of little avail to the people, . . . if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.” But his insight did not change the system. Instead what we have are Caligula’s laws written in the columns of high buildings, indecipherable and impossible to reach. | |
<
< | Lawyers as Ariadne’s String
So what is the legal profession’s role in this quandary? We want lawyers to be Ariadne’s string guiding the indigent and uneducated through the legal maze (although the analogy is somewhat strained, as Ariadne’s string was meant to help Theseus escape the labyrinth, not to navigate it.). The reality is not very encouraging. It seems that the legal profession is complacent because it feeds on this ignorance of the masses. Ignorance of the law creates demand and drives up the price of legal services, although the effect that legal illiteracy of the indigent has on the price of legal services is minimal. The predicament is exacerbated by the massive shortage of lawyers willing to represent the poor. For those who are too poor to afford a private attorney, the options boil down to publicly funded public defenders, public interest groups, and private lawyers fulfilling mandatory pro bono requirements. All three mechanisms are underfunded and understaffed, and according to Building a Better Legal Profession, although large law firms have the most resources at hand to meet the demand for pro bono legal work, escalating requirements for billable hours lead to a declining commitment to pro bono work and “a shockingly low proportion of lawyers at large firms meet even the minimal 50 hour recommendation.” In this respect, Ariadne’s string is far too short and thin to be useful. | >
> | Well, allowing for the
fact that Caligula's laws hardly emerged in response to a comment by
James Madison. What did emerge were the efforts of the codification
movement in the US in the nineteenth century , including the writings
of Theodore Sedgwick and Robert Rantoul, with which you might want to
become familiar, and the codes of David Dudley Field, with which New
York law students used to have some experience, and which none of
your teachers could distinguish from the Code of Hammurabi at
twenty-five paces. | | | | |
<
< | The Minotaur
A consequence of legal illiteracy is the systematic bias in the legal system against the indigent manifested through higher rates of arrest, charges, convictions, long prison sentences and denial of parol. Unlike the myth, here the Minotaur is the product of the labyrinth. While the potential causes for this bias and the corresponding solutions are too numerous to discuss, for the purposes of this essay, I would argue that instead of perpetuating a default rule based on a depressing view of humanity in which people will lie and fabricate excuses to avoid liability, the profession should have a little more faith in the legal system’s ability to determine meaningful factors through discovery and trial. Investment in basic legal education and increasing the accessibility of laws will help prevent the abuse of the ignorance excuse. While there are always settled legal rules, a trial is every person’s forum to assert that his case is unique. In a reformed system, people will not be held responsible despite the impossibility of knowing the law, but rather have a chance to prove that they in fact should be excused. | >
> | Lawyers as Ariadne’s String
So what is the legal profession’s role in this quandary? We want lawyers to be Ariadne’s string guiding the indigent and uneducated through the legal maze (although the analogy is somewhat strained, as Ariadne’s string was meant to help Theseus escape the labyrinth, not to navigate it.). | | | | |
>
> | And you couldn't
possibly want to help the poor escape, by slaying the Minotaur (that
would be terrorism) and remaking the legal landscape (that would be
socialism). Right?
The reality is not very encouraging. It seems that the legal profession is complacent because it feeds on this ignorance of the masses. Ignorance of the law creates demand and drives up the price of legal services, although the effect that legal illiteracy of the indigent has on the price of legal services is minimal. The predicament is exacerbated by the massive shortage of lawyers willing to represent the poor. For those who are too poor to afford a private attorney, the options boil down to publicly funded public defenders, public interest groups, and private lawyers fulfilling mandatory pro bono requirements. All three mechanisms are underfunded and understaffed, and according to Building a Better Legal Profession, although large law firms have the most resources at hand to meet the demand for pro bono legal work, escalating requirements for billable hours lead to a declining commitment to pro bono work and “a shockingly low proportion of lawyers at large firms meet even the minimal 50 hour recommendation.” In this respect, Ariadne’s string is far too short and thin to be useful.
See
SkylarPolanskyFirstPaper for a closer inquiry on these last points.
But you're exaggerating the resources of the poor. Public defenders
only represent poor people when they are charged with crimes, which
is a small part of labyrinth imprisoning the poor. Most legal
services organizations acting in the public interest are
issues-focused organizations like mine, forming relations with
clients in specific social contexts in order to further larger social
aims. The provision of basic civil legal assistance to the poor,
which was envisioned as an important part of Lyndon Johnson's
anti-poverty initiative, the Great Society, was rapidly destroyed by
the succeeding Republican government under Richard Nixon, and the
Legal Services Corporation rapidly faded into the network of
"underfunded and understaffed" specialist organizations you mention
but don't discuss. Large law firm pro bono practices are bound to
prevent conflicts of interest with their firm's clients, and will
never therefore engage in widespread efforts on behalf of poor
clients against banks, real estate developers, industrial polluters,
etc. | | | | |
<
< |
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines: | >
> | | | | | |
<
< | | >
> | The Minotaur
A consequence of legal illiteracy is the systematic bias in the legal system against the indigent manifested through higher rates of arrest, charges, convictions, long prison sentences and denial of parol. | | | | |
<
< | Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list. | >
> | Here, too, an emphasis
on criminal process leads to an underestimate of the real barriers
enclosing the poor.
Unlike the myth, here the Minotaur is the product of the labyrinth. While the potential causes for this bias and the corresponding solutions are too numerous to discuss, for the purposes of this essay, I would argue that instead of perpetuating a default rule based on a depressing view of humanity in which people will lie and fabricate excuses to avoid liability, the profession should have a little more faith in the legal system’s ability to determine meaningful factors through discovery and trial. Investment in basic legal education and increasing the accessibility of laws will help prevent the abuse of the ignorance excuse. While there are always settled legal rules, a trial is every person’s forum to assert that his case is unique. In a reformed system, people will not be held responsible despite the impossibility of knowing the law, but rather have a chance to prove that they in fact should be excused.
I've indicated in my
comments above the places where I think some further effort would
result in improvement of the draft, which overall is both clearly
argued and sophisticatedly expressed. |
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|
SoYeonKimFirstPaper 2 - 16 Feb 2012 - Main.SoYeonKim
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
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| |
<
< | | | | | |
<
< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | | |
<
< | Paper Title | >
> | Law as a Labyrinth for the Indigent | | | -- By SoYeonKim - 14 Feb 2012 | |
>
> | Daedalus’ edifice imprisoning the Minotaur was at least a unicursal labyrinth with a single non-branching pathway leading to the center. Theseus only needed a ball of string to find his way back out. The poor are not so fortunate. For them, the law is a multicursal maze designed to be as difficult to navigate as possible. | | | | |
<
< | Section I
Subsection A
Subsub 1
Subsection B
Subsub 1
Subsub 2 | >
> | Law as a Labyrinth
What makes law a labyrinth? It is near impossible for laymen to access and make sense of vast bodies of statutes, ordinances, and regulations without legal assistance. The adverse social impact of the difficulty of understanding the law is aggravated by the rule of ignorantia juris non excusat. This legal principle that ignorance of the law does not excuse liability for violating it may have made some sense in the past when almost all laws proscribed conduct malum in se. However, an overwhelming array of laws now proscribes conduct malum prohibitum and outlaws morally neutral acts. Moral compass no longer protects the uneducated poor. Defenders of this archaic doctrine would say that it is a rule of fairness. It prevents people from avoiding the consequences of their crimes by claiming ignorance. To me, it seems more like a rule of economy in which the system punishes those who commit crimes in a structure where precise knowledge of the law is impossible and presumes fault because the alternative would require the court to make time consuming and difficult determinations as to the merits of people’s defenses. The perpetuation of this rule is condoning violation of fundamental principles of right to fair trial for sake of modest economy or a distorted sense of fairness. | | | | |
>
> | Whatever the rationale behind this rule, it has disproportionately targeted the poor. The rich are less affected by the difficulty of knowing the law because they are financially capable of hiring lawyers to tell them what is legal and illegal ex ante, and at least diligently represent them ex post. For the uneducated, knowing the law requires more than going to the local law library and reading statutes. Statutes are full of terms of art like “consideration,” “reasonable,” and “firearm,” that mislead readers with their counterintuitive legal definitions. Instead of expecting the uneducated poor to know what the system has made virtually impossible for them to know, by couching the law in layman’s terms, making statutes more accessible, investing in legal education for the masses, and actively publicizing laws, excessive use of this excuse could be kept to a minimum. | | | | |
<
< | Section II | >
> | Madison recognized in Federalist No. 62 that “ [laws] will be of little avail to the people, . . . if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.” But his insight did not change the system. Instead what we have are Caligula’s laws written in the columns of high buildings, indecipherable and impossible to reach. | | | | |
<
< | Subsection A | >
> | Lawyers as Ariadne’s String
So what is the legal profession’s role in this quandary? We want lawyers to be Ariadne’s string guiding the indigent and uneducated through the legal maze (although the analogy is somewhat strained, as Ariadne’s string was meant to help Theseus escape the labyrinth, not to navigate it.). The reality is not very encouraging. It seems that the legal profession is complacent because it feeds on this ignorance of the masses. Ignorance of the law creates demand and drives up the price of legal services, although the effect that legal illiteracy of the indigent has on the price of legal services is minimal. The predicament is exacerbated by the massive shortage of lawyers willing to represent the poor. For those who are too poor to afford a private attorney, the options boil down to publicly funded public defenders, public interest groups, and private lawyers fulfilling mandatory pro bono requirements. All three mechanisms are underfunded and understaffed, and according to Building a Better Legal Profession, although large law firms have the most resources at hand to meet the demand for pro bono legal work, escalating requirements for billable hours lead to a declining commitment to pro bono work and “a shockingly low proportion of lawyers at large firms meet even the minimal 50 hour recommendation.” In this respect, Ariadne’s string is far too short and thin to be useful. | | | | |
<
< | Subsection B | >
> | The Minotaur
A consequence of legal illiteracy is the systematic bias in the legal system against the indigent manifested through higher rates of arrest, charges, convictions, long prison sentences and denial of parol. Unlike the myth, here the Minotaur is the product of the labyrinth. While the potential causes for this bias and the corresponding solutions are too numerous to discuss, for the purposes of this essay, I would argue that instead of perpetuating a default rule based on a depressing view of humanity in which people will lie and fabricate excuses to avoid liability, the profession should have a little more faith in the legal system’s ability to determine meaningful factors through discovery and trial. Investment in basic legal education and increasing the accessibility of laws will help prevent the abuse of the ignorance excuse. While there are always settled legal rules, a trial is every person’s forum to assert that his case is unique. In a reformed system, people will not be held responsible despite the impossibility of knowing the law, but rather have a chance to prove that they in fact should be excused. | | |
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SoYeonKimFirstPaper 1 - 14 Feb 2012 - Main.SoYeonKim
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>
> |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Paper Title
-- By SoYeonKim - 14 Feb 2012
Section I
Subsection A
Subsub 1
Subsection B
Subsub 1
Subsub 2
Section II
Subsection A
Subsection B
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list. |
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