[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.

[AnthonyMouse]

Someone is a horrible person if they are falsely accused of something and use the argument that most effectively allows them to avoid being falsely convicted of it?

It seems to me if you have a country where some people don't have equal rights, the problem is the law, not any individual defendant. That's the easy one to fix, in the sense of knowing what should be done. Much easier than trading false positives against false negatives when there is no way to actually know what happened.

[stale2002]

I am saying that if you make an argument in court that says "This law should be overturned!" as google literally did, then I am going to assume that this means that you think the law should be overturned.

And I will judge you morally if I believe overturning this law is a bad thing.

A company is responsible for it's actions. And if it's actions in court cause a good law to be overturned, as is their stated argument, then I will judge them very poorly for this.

[AnthonyMouse]

The problem is that everything is always complicated.

If employees use the company's email system to discuss politics, then the company's email system contains their policy views, which may not be the company's. Then the company gets sued by someone else who gets a copy of those emails and uses the employees' personal views as evidence of the company's official position.

A solution to that would be to have the law be that political discourse can't be used as evidence of policy or intent in a court case. That might be a good solution, but there may not be support for it in the existing law.

The alternative would be to prevent employees from using the company's official channels for their political discussions, to create a brighter line between official and personal speech. Arguing for the second thing is worse -- it has a lot of other problems -- but arguing for the first thing may not be possible under existing law, leaving it as the company's only apparent alternative to avoid liability. What are they supposed to do then?

[stale2002]

> What are they supposed to do then?

What they should do is follow the law, and not try to get rid of worker protections.

I don't care that it has negative effects on them. I am going to judge them morally, for trying to get rid of a good law.

The whole point of laws is to prevent companies from doing bad things, that might be in their interests.

[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.