Which comes first Laws or Lawyers
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Ok so lets look at this from a balance's (a scale) point of view.
We can even use Ghengis Khan in this example.
A balance has two sides to each, the goal of which is to balance out, correct? Or to find out the tipping point.
GK clearly created laws (do you dispute this?)
He also murdered thousands, and raped just as many (do you also dispute this?)
While creating the laws, he wrote them for his benefit, to tip the scales in his favor. He doesn't need to fully understand the repercussions of the laws he writing besides "these serve me" and "I have people who will enforce what I say".
That is a very basic understanding of balance.
He united modern china by force (murder etc), and creating rules to serve himself and those around him. He used force to ensure people listened to those laws.
He clearly wasn't a lawyer until he began creating laws to serve him self. He eventually went on to create laws of Eye for an Eye (I believe this was him) which made certain things illegal when he was firmly in power.
And people enforced those too.
Eventually he went on to create the modern lawyer in that, he couldn't remember everything, so he said, write this down, and commit it to memory.
Not to argue it, until other people were allowed to learn it, and then arguments came to arise about the law that existed.
But people like GK were clearly the first "lawyers" to create the law to impose on others, because they had the ability to enforce it onto others.
Laws were written by people to rule over others, but people smart enough to literally create laws out of nothing.
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This is a reflection on how my mind functions (?). I read the topic title, and then started this singing in my head:
"Laws and lawyers sitting in a tree
W-r-i-t-i-n-g
First comes laws, then comes lawyers, then comes litigations and lawsuits."
They rhythm breaks down there at the end... -
@Kelly said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
This is a reflection on how my mind functions (?). I read the topic title, and then started this singing in my head:
"Laws and lawyers sitting in a tree
W-r-i-t-i-n-g
First comes laws, then comes lawyers, then comes litigations and lawsuits."
They rhythm breaks down there at the end...To write you have to understand what writing is.
To trade you have to understand trade.
Trade is an exchange of items.
To find that balance, you have to be able to see a literal or fictitious scale and say, yep that is "equal" or to my benefit or theirs.
Whoever is calling "it" balanced and then writing that down as law, is a lawyer.
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@DustinB3403 said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
@Kelly said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
This is a reflection on how my mind functions (?). I read the topic title, and then started this singing in my head:
"Laws and lawyers sitting in a tree
W-r-i-t-i-n-g
First comes laws, then comes lawyers, then comes litigations and lawsuits."
They rhythm breaks down there at the end...To write you have to understand what writing is.
To trade you have to understand trade.
Trade is an exchange of items.
To find that balance, you have to be able to see a literal or fictitious scale and say, yep that is "equal" or to my benefit or theirs.
Whoever is calling "it" balanced and then writing that down as law, is a lawyer.
My comment should in no way be construed as a serious contribution to this thread, but rather as the semi-delirious connections established by a sleep deprived brain.
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We have to step back.... we are in the weeds and we need to look at what the discussion is actually about.
At the end of the day, it turns out that the question is actually "what is a lawyer?"
I saw that the definition of a lawyer is "Someone who reads and advises on the law that currently exists."
@DustinB3403 defines a lawyer as "People who make laws and study laws conceptually."
This fundamental difference in "what is a lawyer" totally changes the outcome and is why we keep going in circles.
This, not which comes first, is the actual discussion. As it is the difference in definition that both are using to define which comes first.
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I would say that the accepted "rise of lawyers" from Wikipedia, being thousands of years after the rise of laws, proves that lawyers must read law, not write them. That and every definition of lawyer I've seen supports this that lawyer read THE law, they don't make laws.
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SO at this point I would limit comments and discussion to this definition point. Anything else is really a red herring, I feel, because this difference in "what is a lawyer" is the actual crux and everything else is just misleading.
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Wikipedia will settle this:
History of the legal professionLaws came first.
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The egg came first.
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@Nic What if the egg was laid by another species?
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I've always been of the position that lawyers interpret law, but do not make the law. However, in that process an evolution occurs: if a lawyer successfully conveys an interpretation of a law that is contradictory to the subject of the person who wrote it, it is often re-written. In that sense, the lawyer was party to changed law.
A judge can also make a law. There is no more judicial restraint in America. They're not bound by staying within the literal writings of laws like lawyers are, but they do take a lawyer's interpretation, sprinkle in some political activism, and boom, you have a new law.
In a lot of cases, laws are influenced before they're ever written. They exist in the air and on the tongues of lawyers, judges, politicians, everyone. The person who actually sits down to write it is honestly the least important person in the equation.
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@Jstear said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
@Nic What if the egg was laid by another species?
The proto-chicken laid the first chicken egg due to a mutation, which then became the first chicken.
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@Nic said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
@Jstear said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
@Nic What if the egg was laid by another species?
The proto-chicken laid the first chicken egg due to a mutation, which then became the first chicken.
So sudo-lawyers wrote the first laws.
There-go lawyers created laws before laws existed.
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@DustinB3403 said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
@Nic said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
@Jstear said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
@Nic What if the egg was laid by another species?
The proto-chicken laid the first chicken egg due to a mutation, which then became the first chicken.
So sudo-lawyers wrote the first laws.
There-go lawyers created laws before laws existed.
Lawyers are far from super users.
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@TAHIN said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
I've always been of the position that lawyers interpret law, but do not make the law.
That's correct. Every definition I know of says this.
However, in that process an evolution occurs: if a lawyer successfully conveys an interpretation of a law that is contradictory to the subject of the person who wrote it, it is often re-written. In that sense, the lawyer was party to changed law.
Party to, but not the changer. No more a party to than any person that argues against an existing law or points out flaws. A lawyer is a generic end user of the law in the context. The changer is still exclusively a politician. And the interpreter is still exclusively a judge.
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In court law, politicians have no say. A judicial decision, made by interpreting current laws, creates a new law. It's one of the only beautiful things left in our judicial system. Then politicians try to create new laws to nullify it.
But that's off topic. So "Which came first, laws or lawyers?" Laws did. Just like English came before translators, video games came before cheat codes, and the computer came before the instruction manual.
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Politicians make law
Lawyers/Judges interpret law.
This is executive vs judicial two different things, one makes law one does not.
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@Jason said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
This is executive vs judicial two different things, one makes law one does not.
At the federal level... this is Congress makes all laws, Supreme Court interprets all laws.
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If we include "natural law" then the laws pre-date the lawyers.
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@Nic said in Which comes first Laws or Lawyers:
If we include "natural law" then the laws pre-date the lawyers.
Even if we don't.
