(U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Magistrate Judge Program)
"Settle With The B*st*rds!" It just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Justice does not come easily. Dr. King famously said that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. He never said it would be easy.
Some things must already be in place before justice can come. Things like commitment to a set of moral values even as others do their best to lower those values, even destroy them. And things like the courage it will take to stand against the forces that will deny justice to you and to anyone else for as long as it may be worth their while.
During my experience practicing law, "sue the b*st*rds" was a catch phrase. For better or for worse, I never hear it said now.
News that the Paul Weiss law firm settled with the regime rather than contest one of the latest so-called executive orders has prompted me to write about this. They could have "sued the b*st*rds" but they didn't. This is a subject that has been on my mind.
The contrast with the Coie Perkins law firm is too great to hold my tongue any longer. Coie Perkins actually did "sue the b*st*rds."
Paul Weiss has all the lawyers in the world. I guess they decided in their wisdom, which is closer to their situation than mine, that money was too important to them to spend it to fight being made targets.
Coie Perkins has the second most lawyers in the world. Paul Weiss has chosen to settle. Coie Perkins has chosen to sue.
That spurred me to share my thoughts. My thoughts on the subject may be incomplete as a result of these sudden developments, but they are certain.
Lawsuits are a poor way of advancing public policy. That is mostly because, in my eyes, litigation exists to serve the litigants in our legal system. Parties can settle whenever they want, for whatever they want. Settlements benefit the parties, not the public, at least in the vast majority of civil cases.
It is only when lawsuits are taken to conclusion that they affect public policy, and even then public policy will depend on the conclusion that was reached in a given case.
All that is true in my experience. To say again, lawsuits are a poor way of making policy.
But settlements are even worse. Settlements hardly ever make policy. For one thing, most settlements are kept secret. Take a look at the reporting over the Paul Weiss settlement, for example. The details so far have come out of the regime, not from Paul Weiss.
No settlement of this kind ever made things better for the American public.
No settlement like this ever vindicated a Constitutional principle.
And no settlement under circumstances like this, in which one party backed off their exercise of domination only because another party capitulated, ever was good for anyone except perhaps the one who dominated after all.
Never.
Ever.
So regardless of what else you may hear from other people, these are my thoughts. Even if a lawsuit fails to accomplish anything, at least the parties and their lawyers tried. Sometimes, though, they improve public policy including when a good defense is put up in the case.
Settlements, on the other hand, always fail to benefit the public in cases like this. Sometimes they benefit one of the parties to the settlement. Rarely they benefit all of the parties to the settlement. But always these settlements fail to benefit the public.
Two final thoughts. I am familiar with the choice between sue or settle. The choice in a civil suit is different from what seems to be the current choice everywhere in addition to the choices in courts: Withstand or submit. Not for a long time have most people been forced to choose between such extremes, I think.
I think that most people alive today have not been forced to choose between such extremes, to withstand or to submit. I am pretty confident, though, that our public choices have not been informed by money anywhere near as much as they are now.
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