|
Today in History (1862) - The U.S. government forbids all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation. On the same day in 1865, the Confederate Congress voted to enlist 300,000 black troops, granting them freedom with the consent of their owners. Lee surrendered a few weeks later. |
All this talk of "Technicalities" has put me in the mood for legal theory. The first problem with defending or rejecting a judicial result based on a technicality is that �technicality� doesn�t have a very specific meaning. It�s sometimes used rhetorically to argue that one�s opponent is relying on the letter but not the spirit of the law, or that a theory advocates some result that appears to be outside the law�s purpose, even if it�s within the law�s mandate. So if a criminal defendant argues that his confession was �compelled� by an overwhelming sense of guilt and civic duty, suppressing that confession under the 5th Amendment would certainly be an instance of �getting off on a technicality� that one should disapprove (I know, this example is extreme, but you get the idea).
But some cry �technicality� when the law does precisely what it�s supposed to do at the momentary expense of justice. If our defendant�though guilty as sin�had been forced to take the stand and speak (or face contempt penalties), we ought to say that any incriminating testimony should be thrown out, regardless of guilt, to preserve the function of the 5th Amendment, for better or worse, because fidelity to our Constitution requires that we set free the guilty sometimes in order to minimize unjust law enforcement.
So the rule of law certainly doesn�t depend on the first kind of technicality�which I doubt Will Baude meant to argue�and I�d even suggest that it doesn�t absolutely depend on the second type, either, at least with respect to non-constitutional technicalities. As I understand it, courts often sidestep some of the finer points of procedure when strict adherence seems pointless. And technicalities, in judge-made law, are revised (and even jettisoned) all the time by higher courts. The very fact that trial judges are given a great deal of discretion over evidentiary matters is an indication that hyper-technical regimes of finely tuned rules for every occasion are not only very difficult to design properly, but are sometimes not worth the administrative burdens they bring.
April 20, 2004 6:22 PM | TrackBack