[xdmr]

A lot of people seem to be splitting hairs over whether this guy's testimony or report in the trial is or isn't "practicing engineering," and whether that means that he's therefore clearly in violation of the rules and should be punished, or whether this proves that professional licensing is evil and should be abolished.

What's missing is the fact that the conduct in question happened in a courtroom. If I drive over a bridge and it collapses and kills me, I don't get to hire a lawyer and an expert witness from the afterlife and have them try to impeach the credibility of the bridge designer or demonstrate the unsuitability of his plans and, if I manage to convince a jury, I get to be resurrected. Since I can't do this, the state enacted some rules about what kind of qualifications the guy designing the bridge has to have.

But in a courtroom, if I don't like this unlicensed engineer the other side wants to put on the stand, I can try to prove he doesn't know what he's talking about. I can hire my own engineer to help me come up with tricky questions to make a fool of him on the stand and maybe prevent him being accepted as an expert. I can cross-examine him with help from my own engineer to prepare. I can have my own engineer testify to rebut his claims. I have all sorts of options besides causing him to be threatened with violation of professional licensing laws.

The point is that the professional licensing laws exist to protect people in situations like driving over a bridge. They do not exist to protect the public from the risk that unlicensed people may testify in court about engineering, thereby potentially producing injustice. This is because lawyers already exist to do this job, and are extensively trained and licensed to do it. That's why the lawsuit attacks the professional licensing laws as _overbroad_, not inappropriate in the context of certifying people to design bridges and that kind of thing.