Conor Friedersdorf is a name often mentioned here, both because I think he’s exceptionally smart and occasionally too kind, generous to a fault to people who might not be worthy of his largesse. I now add my name to the list.
For more than a decade, the criminal-defense attorney Scott H. Greenfield has been writing about American law and culture at Simple Justice. Among the site’s readers are lawyers, law professors, judges, civil libertarians, and advocates of criminal-justice reform. What keeps me coming back is his zealous advocacy for a consistent set of principles no matter how unpopular their application might be in a given instance.
There may be no better compliment than to characterize what I attempt to do here as “zealous advocacy for a consistent set of principles no matter how unpopular their application might be in a given instance.” It’s never entirely clear that I live up to that description, and many would, and have, questioned my views for their consistency.
It’s hard to be an unpopular voice, and it’s often contrary to what one would prefer to be. Let’s face facts, it’s more fun to be loved and adored, if not by all than at least by most. And it’s fairly easy these days to pick sides that will get the most eyeballs, the most followers, the most “likes.” If you look closely, you can see quite easily what evokes positive responses.
But is that what it’s all about?
Whether I agree or strongly disagree with where he comes down on a given matter, I can count on his steadfast commitment to an underlying ethos. And in many instances that helps me to see what is at stake more clearly.
Curiously, Conor juxtaposes “agree” with “strongly disagree,” suggesting that his disagreement with me is the stronger of his reactions. In an odd way, that’s as it should be. Whether I’m right is rarely the point; reasonable people can differ. But if I can introduce thought into the mix when considering questions that matter, then I’ve contributed something worthwhile.
If I didn’t think that my position was sound, I wouldn’t say so, as I’m not here to troll your feelings for the sake of being contrarian, even if many baby lawyers perceive me that way because they are too ideologically blind to consider that their positions might be wrong or unprincipled. They are often a close-minded bunch, but then they are filled with the certainty of youth. It takes time before they come to realize that life and people don’t fit neatly into their paradigms.
When I write, I often don’t know where I’m going to end up. As I’ve said before, I subscribe to the Shakespearean ideal that I don’t know what I think until I see what I write. I regularly end up in a very different place at the end of a post than I thought I would when I started. I go where the facts and logic take me, even if my plan was to go elsewhere when I took the first step.
What I try not to do is go where others would want me to go for the sake of acceptance or validation. I may end up there, but I may end up somewhere entirely different. And if I do, then you, like Conor, will “strongly disagree” with my positions. Yet, like Conor, I hope you will find them worthy of consideration no matter how greatly they differ from yours.
Please take a look at Conor’s interview of me in The Atlantic:
One Criminal-Defense Attorney’s Lament
Scott Greenfield argues that innocents are being sacrificed in the name of utopian causes.
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Just think about what a badass you’d be if you were still young enough to know everything.
At the risk of just being a tummy rub (and my opinion is worth exactly what you’ve paid for it), I agree with Mr. Friersdorf 100%, and that is exactly why I read here regularly.
I’m with you.
Happy T-day to all.
Come here because it’s not an echo chamber; stay to say “Me too!”
Congrats and Happy Turkey Day.
Congratulations. Thank you and thank God for all you do.
SHG,
In the engaging Atlantic article, you said: “I view the criminal legal system as a Rube Goldberg machine . . . .” True, but we operate it with ruthless efficiency.
All the best to you and yours.
Rich Kopf
I didn’t pick the image of a boot by accident, Judge. Happy Thanksgiving.
I wonder how many people know what a Rube Goldberg machine is. He died in 1970 and probably retired before 1950.
My impression is that the criminal legal system is similar to a can opener with parts count of 200 that you are not sure it will open the can.
You’re right. My reference may land with a loud old man thud.
i come to this here Hotel because it is the lone place I’ve found, across all the vast Internet jungle, where I encounter those that think in the same manner. Not the same way; that’s result-driven. The folks here think in the same manner: through deliberation. Well, most, Those that don’t or can’t get bounced back to the valet.
On this Thanksgiving Day, I’m thankful for all of you that toil here. You make me smarter by keeping thinking alive.
Now to find a turkey in the Swamp. . . .
Now there’s something properly uninvented.
Wait, Grandma?
I agree with Mr. Friedersdorf. Happy Thanksgiving, and thank you for all that you do on this site and elsewhere.
It’s good not to bend principle to popularity. However, there are times where it seems as if you actually take pleasure in the opposite: fomenting unpopularity by heckling. And while I believe you when you say you’re not here to troll, I think the reality is that on the occasions you do that, it’s a form of trolling.
I for one, prefer it when you expound without such.
There are a great many people on the interwebs, and they each approach what they read from their own perspective and imputing their own motivatios to others to justify why someone might come out with a different view than theirs. I can understand why it seems that way to you (and, I’m sure, others), but consider that it’s not a reflection of me, but you. Since I don’t know who you are, it would be impossible for me to offer anything more. I can only barely read my mind. I can’t read yours.
It’s not about differing views.
As one small example (and it is, indeed, one of the smaller examples), take your recent post on the ACLU. I’m in agreement with the substance of your view. In fact, I may well have been ahead of you: I gave up on the ACLU in graduate school, ~1990, when the Central New York chapter declined to support (either formally or informally) my complaint against Syracuse University for allowing a student-fee funded group to baldly discriminate on the basis of race, and one of the leaders of the local chapter — also a Dean at the law school — subsequently chaired a University task force that actually proposed changing the school rules to formally allow such discrimination. (This was adopted, but reversed a few years later as part of a consent decree with the DoE OCR, as a result of an administrative complaint I ended up filing.)
Still, a remark like “In four words, this twit said it all” in that post strikes me as gratuitous. (I won’t bother to cite further examples in that very post.)
You can accept the criticism or you can dismiss it. (I’m not really expecting you to accept it. I simply felt it needed to be said, in the face of commentary that seems to either ignore or deny such.) But the suggestion that the criticism is rooted in whether I agree with you or not, on any particular topic, is simply incorrect.
JS Greenfield: That’s the example you chose?? You left out the four words in question “inappropriately favoring the accused.” SHG is 100% correct that those four words show that the ACLU has sold out the cause of civil liberties in favor of their favorite flavor of social justice. I don’t understand how you can agree with the substance of SHG’s criticism yet deny that those four words say it all.
I’m at a loss for how you could read my comment and think that I was taking issue with the substantive aspect of that remark.
I’d have thought it obvious that I was taking issue with the name calling.
Perhaps you haven’t been reading here long enough to realize that SHG calls all twitter comments twits rather than tweets. The term referenced the mode of communication, not the person making the comment.
Ah, that’s what JSG was referring to as name-calling. I had no clue.
I read here only occasionally — generally when Twitter includes an SHG tweet in the email digest it sends me. So no, I did not recognize “twit” as referencing the mode of communication — and now realizing that was the intended meaning, I’ll withdraw my objection to it.
There was another post I had read sometime in the last month or two that, at least at the time, I read as seeming even more egregiously mean-spirited, but going back through posts now, I’m unable to find it — so perhaps that was on me, or whatever my frame of mind was at the time.
To be clear, I wasn’t ever asserting disingenuity, and certainly not malevolence (evil), nor was I taking issue with any particular viewpoint. What I was observing was more along the lines of observing that while Simon Cowell was usually right when he declared someone to be an awful singer, he frequently chose to do such in a manner designed to inflict maximum humiliation (and generate the most entertainment value) — I could appreciate the truth-telling, but I appreciated it more absent his gratuitous insults.
Having had the misunderstanding regarding “twit” pointed out, and now having gone back through a number of posts…well, there’s lots of very colorful language certainly not designed to win converts, but nothing that I could characterize as seeming designed to inflame, so I retract that suggestion. Mea culpa.
This has been ironically amusing, though not in ways you’re likely to appreciate.
Even your non-apology apology is passive-aggressive. It’s a gift.
An irony here is that you may have understood what you meant in your original comment, but I had no clue. It’s that reading minds thing. People who read SJ, and commenters, see both my words and theirs from their mindset. It’s normal, and the breadth of readership and commenting makes it impossible for me to speak directly to everyone’s particular issues. People sometimes write comments that are very clear to them, but very vague to me. People aren’t always as clear as they think they are.
As for your example, meh. Not only was it not gratuitous, but it said what I meant it to say. That you feel otherwise doesn’t make me a troll, but merely in disagreement with your view. Note that I’m not saying you’re wrong for disagreeing with my point or words, but you’ve imputed a disingenuous motive to me for my writing something you don’t care for. Disagree all you want, but what you don’t get to do is put malevolent purpose to my words. Only I get to do that.
That comment is damn near clinically passive-aggressive.
Near? Some people can’t help themselves.