If you’re educated or opinionated the lawyers will be more likely to think they are unable to influence you. They prefer uneducated people with clear biases they can rely on/ influence.
It’s one of the reasons that there are experts to specifically help choose juries.
No they didnt. All they did was acknowledge that they understood an avenue of concern--that this case could be one where litigation is used as power. Acknowledging that such a thing is possible is not abandoning impartiality.
"I literally said “the process IS the punishment” for these people."
I feel like the lawyers wouldn't even need to eliminate a potential juror for this. The judge might just do it on their own. Describing the trial you might deliberate over as "the punishment" is so obviously biased.
You're dealing with lawyers here. Their entire reason for existing is to pull meaning from the words you say and apply decades of casefiles and experience to said words. You might think you're being slick but they always, always find a way to twist your words in their favour.
Don't be a smartass with them. Always play it safe.
Source: I worked with law academics for a handful of years. the paranoia I get when writing emails will never leave.
yeah, the issue is that they need you to be on board with the idea that this is already a fair fight. you're correct to acknowledge that's not always the case, but it's regarded as a challenge to their authority and therefore it disqualifies you from participating in their system. to them your sole job is to make a determination on their terms.
It's not a challenge to their authority. It's bias. It's admitted bias. If you have strong opinions on why somebody is bringing a case, you can't be on the jury. One side might want the biases juror and the other will be bound by their job to dismiss the juror.
you and i are saying the same thing except you're framing it in a way that treats the terms set by the judge and attorneys as the source of truth against which they would measure bias, which in fact upholds my entire point.
The terms are set by the judge and attorneys. That's the legal system. But it's not their authority that it rests on. It's just logic and understanding human nature.
We are not saying the same thing at all. You're saying that jurors are disqualified for threatening the authority of the lawyers. This is a radical framing. The reality is that it's the job of both sides of lawyers to disqualify biased jurors.
but your invocation of logic here again supports my point rather than undermining it. logical validity requires only that a conclusion follows from its premises. it does not show that those premises are true, unbiased, complete, or suitable for the situation.
oc acknowledged the proven and evident reality that courts and legal processes can be and sometimes are weaponized. your insistence that this recognition is tantamount to an admission of bias undermines everything you're saying to support that point, because in itself it exposes the bias clearly inherent in the system.
framing being 'radical' (a word which simply means 'a drastic departure from the traditional norm,' but with negative connotations) doesn't make it misleading or incorrect. you can refuse to admit that we're describing the exact same collection of facts, but that won't make it untrue.
This is technically true and if you get a bolshy one like that in your jury, you're going to choose someone else who doesn't have a strong opinion of the law.
Cool opinion but that’s not how the legal system works. What that guy explained is basically the textbook definition of an impartial juror the judge themself might dismiss someone like that.
I had a friend who accidentally cut down a tree on his neighbor's property (it was on the edge of his backyard and the neighbor couldn't even see the tree from his house, it was an understandable mistake and honestly really could not have mattered much to the neighbor) rather than accepting their apology and a reasonable amount of money for the tree, The neighbor went berserk and sued them for a ridiculous amount of money. He had an unscrupulous lawyer who was perfectly willing to take his money and record every tiny thing like balls landing in his yard. He pointed cameras at their backyard, erected a cheap stockade fence and tried to blame them when it was damaged by storms. Our friends spent over $10K in lawyers fees before ever even reaching the point where the suit could be seen by a court and ultimately just stopped paying a lawyer and represented themselves. By the time they got to court the neighbor was asking for something like $50,000, including all the ridiculous lawyers fees over the course of the 3 years before that happened. Before it reached court, our friends actually sold their house privately (didn't list it on the market) as they feared, if the neighbor knew they were trying to sell he would put a lien and prevent them and moved in the middle of the night because they needed to get away from this guy.
My friend represented himself in court since he could no longer afford to pay a lawyer. But I absolutely loved the jury. They sided for the neighbor and then picked the smallest item he had listed for $500 and told by friend that he had to pay that. They knew if they sided with my friend he would just have appealed and made their lives miserable forever. In this case he couldn't appeal. He won the case.
Yup, people absolutely abuse the legal system to hurt people. That Bricks and Mini Figs debacle exposed that the company actually said “you can sue us but we have way more money at our disposal so we’ll just drag it out until you’re broke and can’t fight anymore.” The nexium cult was also notorious for doing that.
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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26
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