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IANAL
You might remember the story a few months ago about the 15-year-old stock manipulator, who pumped and dumped stocks on message boards full of gullible idiots. Now the NYT Magazine has a story that is even better - that legal professional answering your questions about criminal law? Maybe he's a 15-year-old too.
While it is true that stereotypes in regards to race, religion, etc. are very rare on the web, to say that it is the "great equalizer" is wrong. People who are unable to express themselves effectively online using English, either because of a lack of education or because it is not their native language, are taken less seriously. It's not far fetched to have a non-native English speaker trying to present an astute point in a web forum but having their readers take them less seriously due to their grammatical errors.
Also, stereotypes do exist. Linux users. AOL users. Windows users. People who read Slashdot. People who read Stile Project. People who use Netscape. People who use IE. People on a certain forum with a lot of posts. People with a few posts. The list goes on and on. A particularly horrible stereotype seen on the web is that if someone is somewhat computer illeterate (just well versed enough to get online) they are then assumed by many to be uneducated or overall incompetent.
There are less ways for these individual traits to be determined (an @aol.com email, for example, is a dead giveaway for an AOLer,) but they are still used to jump to conclusions about the person expressing themselves, in a fundamentally identical manner to the way people do so IRL based upon race, creed, economic status, etc.
I would agree that this phenomenon is much better on the Internet than IRL, but again the Internet is far from the "everyone is equal" utopia you claim it to be.
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Oh you mean the Ten Commandments?
The ten commandments are proper as religious rules (God's law), but the 1st four commandments are purely religious (and thus not proper subjects for secular law, unless your society represses other religeons).
The three (kill, lie, steal -- not) were suggested, and are arguably required for a functioning society.
Two of the remaining three are versions of lying (adultery -- making your vows false, and false witness, i.e. lying under oath). The last one is an injunction against covetousness, and while that's perfectly good advice, it's not something I want Big Brother to monitor (acting on it is stealing, but wanting it is just thinking).
Also read it on Yahoo (without registering) here.
that legal professional answering your questions about criminal law? Maybe he's a 15-year-old too.
Sounds like a certain website I know...
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I am a lawyer. I work for a firm in Sonoma, California. My employer has a radio program where he answers legal questions on the air.
I started working for my employer in 1994, fixing and upgrading his computers (eventually I built up a network). In early 1995, I was hired on full time to put together a book proposal consisting of a bunch of newspaper columns written by this attorney. Eventually I started drafting answers to letters written to the newspaper column (which were always reviewed and rewritten by the attorney). I also did on-the-fly legal research for persons calling the radio program.
Eventually, my boss took me aside and said "You're a schmuck if you don't go to law school". After an hour of arm twisting, I relented. I started law school, and liked it.
Here I am.
Much of my job today consists of dealing with questions posed by persons calling or e-mailing the radio program. I do research and draft answers for my employer to use on the air. The questions are highly varied, such as "How can I get my 20 year old marijuana conviction purged from my record?" and "My boss's check bounced. How can I get the money?" For this reason, I can understand the position Marcus Arnold is in. I've been there (albeit at a much older age, and under the supervision of an attorney).
Arnold is not doing poorly, but I have to admit that some of his answers leave something to be desired. As an example, the answer concerning the Miranda rights of a criminal defendant is not necessarily correct. The statements of a person under arrest made in response to a custodial interrogation without benefit of the Miranda warning are admissible to impeach the testimony of the defendant (at least they were two years ago while I was studying constitutional law). It's hard to know things like this unless you have recently taken a class in criminal procedure or constitutional law or you work in the field.
The advice that Marcus can give (and it is legal advice - we should not kid ourselves) is good, but it's not enough. He can spot some issues, but he really cannot give anyone a definitive answer. Why? Because he hasn't been trained enough in the law to be able to spot all the important issues posed in a question, and without access to the applicable statutes and case law, he's really just guessing as to what the law is on a particular subject.
Having said that, more power to him. I don't have any problems with him dispensing his opinion via e-mail, as long as he's not masquerading as a person actually licensed to practice law. His coorespondents should not read his answers with the belief that they are a correct statement of the law, because it could get them in trouble.
I hope that Arnold goes to law school and becomes a lawyer for real. Not many 15-year-olds have as powerful an interest in the law as he has.
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"How did you do that?!?" we asked her. Her reply: "I made-believe I was one of the big kids."
An engineer comes in to work in the morning to find his Boss, screwdriver in hand, rooting around in one of the server boxes. Cables and cards are strewn haphazardly on the floor.
Somehow succeeding in suppressing his shock and horror, the engineer manages to keep his grip on his coffee cup and stammers, "What are you doing? ... How did you do that?!?"
The Boss says, "I read this book about 'borrowed genius'. I made-believe I was one of the engineers."
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