Probable Cause

In Rhetoric and The Rule of Law: A Theory of Legal Reasoning (Law, State, and Practical Reason), Neil MacCormick notes that:

It is a well-recognized truism that even the most carefully drafted and detailed text can never convey a fully determinate meaning for all possible purposes.¹

This is as true of what I’ve been writing lately on Proposition 19 as it is of Proposition 19 itself.

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1. Neil MacCormick, Rhetoric and The Rule of Law: A Theory of Legal Reasoning (Law, State, and Practical Reason) (2005) 122. [↩]

I previously wrote a post titled “Judge Not,” so I couldn’t go with that again.  Then it occurred to me that the second part of Matthew 7:1 from the book read by almost as many Christians as non-Christians fits the current post better anyway.

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My last post, “Blowing Smoke: Proposition 19 & Medical Marijuana,” has perhaps drawn more readers than just about any other post I’ve written (including “A Drowning Man”).

Some comments indicate an incomplete grasp of what my original post was intended to point out: there is a possibility for Proposition 19, as worded, to undo the protections of the existing rights of medical marijuana patients.

This post, therefore, is another attempt to focus attention on that point and explain why, regardless of the intentions of Proposition 19 proponents, Proposition 19 may contain within it the seeds to undoing, at least in part, what was accomplished with Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, which legalized marijuana in California for medical patients who needed it.

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Yesterday, I drove to downtown San Francisco — something which, on a weekday, is definitely not on my list of favorite things to do — to the Hiram W. Johnson State Building for a meeting of the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers.  The topic of discussion was Marijuana & Federalism: California a Test Case: The Legal Implications of Proposition 19.¹

The meeting was somewhat informative, but when it came to addressing questions of significant concern to my medical marijuana clients, I guess I’d have to say there was a lot of smoke being blown — and it didn’t come from any high-quality buds.

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1. At the time of this blog post, the VCL main page advertised the conference, so I linked it.  As time passes, I suspect they will change the content of that website, but it still may be useful to people to know where it was. [↩]

Readers of my last post will sense a major dissatisfaction on my part when it comes to blogging about the Law.   I have to say that the responses to that post were are encouraging.  To the readers who posted those responses: thank you.  Were it not for those comments, I suspect I would, after all was said and done, consider everything simply said…and done.

Instead, I’ve spent some time thinking about how to move forward.

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I haven’t posted much lately, I know.  To be frank, I’ve considered just taking down my blogs.  I’ve struggled with the decision as to what to do — and tried to understand why I feel the way that I feel.  It’s not that I don’t have things to say: I’ve written numerous posts.  I just never complete them because, well…it hardly seems worth it. 

Our system is irrevocably broken.  Nothing short of a new Revolution would fix it.  And I’m not at all sure the Americans of today can fix it even then.  We can only, at best, tear down the present Tyranny. 

And why is that? 

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I’m a pretty smart guy.  Usually.  Or, at least, I’m not a stupid guy.  I know a few things.  Exactly how many is something that is no doubt open for debate.  But one of the first things I learned on my own, as a child, is that only a fool thinks he knows everything.

There is no one walking — or crawling — the planet who does not make mistakes.  Even robots make mistakes.

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Being a criminal defense attorney is not the easiest job I could have chosen.  In many ways, it’s the hardest.  I am, unfortunately, an idealist of the worst sort.  I believe in The Law.  I do not believe The Law should be broken.

Why, then, do I “defend criminals”?

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When I was young and a Boy Scout, I worked hard to earn, among others, my Lifesaving merit badge.

There may be lots of situations in which a life needs to be saved, but the Boy Scout Lifesaving merit badge focuses on saving drowning people.  One of the things you learn is “[h]ow rescue techniques vary depending on the setting and the condition of the person needing assistance.”  Along the way to earning the badge, you have to “[e]xplain the importance of avoiding contact with an active victim and describe lead-and-wait tactics.”

As a criminal defense attorney, I’m having to re-learn these things.

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The only American President ever elected to more than two terms — he would die at the start of his fourth term as President — Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously stated in the Inaugural Address to his first term his “firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Unlike today’s politicians, Roosevelt was all about quelling irrational fear. Whatever you might think about the specifics of his politics and plans, Roosevelt seriously wanted to improve society and thus tried to ameliorate fear by making us believe “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Those in power today want to keep us in a constant state of fear. They’ve turned scaring us into a highly-successful, hugely-profitable (for them) art form.

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