[pdpi]

> Are we going to ignore that Google responded that they published this as part of a legal defense rather than a lobbying effort.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. I'd go as far as to say that this actually makes it _worse_, not better. Saying that that those protections are important is easy when there's nothing at stake. The fact that they then called for their overturn when the chips are down is how you know what they really think about it.

[koboll]

It's silly to equate a legal defense with a belief though.

I may not have the belief, personally, that spontaneous crimes of passion deserve a light sentence, but it would be malpractice for my lawyer to therefore not advance that argument if, god forbid, I was convicted of a murder. Whether I committed the murder or not, and whether or not I believe those sentencing guidelines should be extrapolated to wider society, as a lawyer you have an obligation to use every tool in your arsenal that can help your client. It has nothing to do with your own personal or political views on whether those tools should exist.

[topspin]

> It's silly to equate a legal defense with a belief though.

It's actually silly not to. As was said; when there is something at stake their story is something other than what they offer while placating outrage. I can't fathom rationally choosing to believe meaningless pillow talk over the black and white filings of Google's representation in a court.

[pdpi]

Had they argued that the Obama-era rules didn't apply to this case for some reason, I would've agreed with you. But the argument is that those rules should be overruled. That is precisely arguing that your preferred outcome for this case should be "extrapolated to wider society", as you put it.

[koboll]

If those two arguments would have been equally effective, then perhaps you would be right. I would bet that that wasn't the case, and that's why Google's attorneys advanced the argument they did. Perhaps you are right but they advanced both arguments to be safe, as a higher parent comment suggested.

But it's hard to tell, because the article is vague on these points. It refers to their actual argument only as "urged the National Labor Relations Board to undo that precedent". What exactly does that mean? It's written as if they submitted a policy brief, but it sounds more like they were arguing a prior decision by the NLRB was incorrectly decided, based on previous precedent. Which is something attorneys do all the time and much less dramatic, sans the lobbying-esque framing here.

[rootusrootus]

Assertions of certain politicians to the contrary, corporations are not people, and Google wasn't defending against a crime of passion.

[koboll]

Sure, I wrote a contrived example. But the onus, I think, is on the critics in this thread to provide the theory of legal ethics under which attorneys should refrain from advancing the most effective defense of their clients if doing so might cause public relations concerns. It's my understanding that zealously defending their clients within the bounds of the law is among an attorney's highest obligations.

[rootusrootus]

In my view, the lawyer is absolutely obligated to present all viable (in their view) legal options to their client. But the buck stops with the client -- they decide which legal arguments to make.

[pdpi]

To use an equally contrived example of my own — there's plenty of jurisdictions where arguing something along the lines of "look at how she was dressed, she was asking for it" will get you off the hook on rape charges. Would you still argue that an attorney who makes that argument is merely "advancing the most effective defense of their clients"? Or would you find that conduct reprehensible both for the attorney, and the client who allowed the attorney to use that line of reasoning?

Ultimately, it's your own choice what lines of arguing you present, and you don't get an ethical freebie just because it's "effective".

[AnthonyMouse]

> To use an equally contrived example of my own — there's plenty of jurisdictions where arguing something along the lines of "look at how she was dressed, she was asking for it" will get you off the hook on rape charges.

Rape is an unusually problematic situation because consensual sex and unconsensual sex produce a lot of the same physical evidence, and it's possible for someone to consent but after the fact have regrets or experience social pressure.

That leaves you having to evaluate evidence of whether or not there was consent. If you're a falsely accused defendant trying to rebut a claim that she didn't consent, what evidence of that do you propose to use?

Also notice that look at how she was dressed is a particularly ineffective "get out of jail free card" when the accuser was a nun dressed in her habit.

The implications of that, i.e. that you're more credible if you dress conservatively and don't attend frat parties, are very politically inconvenient.

But a black man has a constitutional right to carry a handgun, which also makes it more likely that he'll be shot by the police who will use it as a defense. It would be better if these trade offs didn't exist, but how do you propose to make them not?

[stale2002]

It is not about "making a proposal to make sure these tradoffs don't exist".

Instead it is about morally judging someone for making a morally reprehensible argument.

If there is some country in the world where black people don't have equal rights, and a company uses this as a legal defense for it's behavior, then I am going to judge the company as being full of horrible horrible human beings.

One does not get a free pass for your behavior, just because it is legal. Onr instead should get judged for the horrible person that one is.

[Rylinks]

there's plenty of people who think defending a criminal at all is ethically dubious. Depriving criminal defendants of the most effective defense by applying social pressure to their attorneys is not a good road to walk down.

[yourbandsucks]

The legal system treats them as entities very similar to people. It's not a statement of principle, it's a statement of process.

[sjg007]

I'm guessing stock holders would argue that there's a fiduciary duty to get the best legal defense and the lawyers have a similar mandate. Still you would think that Google would not mount such a defense on the basis of a moral principal.

[akiselev]

IANAL but "We're in an extremely competitive industry and we might lose all of our best people if we do this" is a perfectly good reason to give shareholders. It only breaks fiduciary duty if the executives have concrete data that their actions will have zero impact on hiring, which is a stretch.

[geodel]

> we might lose all of our best people if we do this

This is the argument media seems to be making for long time. So far instead of all not even 0.01% seems to have shown conviction and left Google. Or it just might be the case the best people seems more concerned only with technical issues at work.

[nabla9]

Court room is an adversarial game, everything the defense or prosecutors say should be considered in this light. They should use every argument to defend themselves.

Google has fiduciary duty to not lose money unnecessarily. The corporate policy is completely different from legal defense when sued.

[jschwartzi]

This is fine, but then you can't claim the moral high ground if your legal defense is that employees don't actually have the rights that your policy says they do.

It's worth noting that people don't like doing business with hypocrites either, so Google has a fiduciary duty to avoid pissing its customers and employees off by systematically eroding their rights through legal arguments as well.

[nabla9]

If I think that castling should be removed from the chess rules. Am I a hypocrite when I use it when I play with others?

In the same way proposing laws that would limit legal tax evasion loopholes and using those loopholes is not a hypocricy. They work at different levels.

Wanting to change rules (laws) so that everyone must play with the same rules and using rules until they are changed is not hypocrisy.

Court battle is like debate competition, you can use arguments you don't believe in.

[kamarg]

> Court battle is like debate competition, you can use arguments you don't believe in.

Except that court battles have consequences. If you use an argument you don't believe in for a debate competition, you aren't going to overturn laws designed to protect people from those with more power. If you do it in court, there's a possibility that you're going to make many lives worse.