Re: POL: Reaction to Microsoft Ruling

From: Michael S. Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Apr 12 2000 - 10:04:53 MDT


Technotranscendence wrote:

> On Tuesday, April 11, 2000 10:24 PM Coyote coyyote@hotmail.com wrote:
> > The corporate organisation known as the American Bar Association
> > notwithstanding
>
> The ABA is a government supported monopoly. Without the government to back
> its power, it would face serious competition from law clinics (which it
> already does in some states of the US*), unlicensed lawyers, etc. See,
> e.g., _The Rule of Experts: Occupational Licensing in America_ by S. David
> Young for other examples of businesses that use the government to avoid the
> market.

A State Supreme Court ruling in Vermont a few years ago found that the legal
requirements that a person's lawyer be an attorney did not explicitly require
that the person have a law degree and be a member of the bar. It was shown that
there is historical evidence that there is a distinct difference between what
the definitions of an attorney is, and what an attorney-at-law is. The VBA was
rather miffed at this....

> The remedy for this situation seems quite clear: Eliminate government
> interference in the market. Of course, one could choose the typical route:
> Increase government interference to undo the problems of previous government
> interventions. BUT that only results in a spiral of regulations, protected
> businesses and people, and politics coopting consumer choice. At least,
> this has almost always been the case when people opt for more and stricter
> regulations. (In fact, I can't think of one counterexample to this claim.:)
>
> Cheers!
>
> Daniel Ust
> http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/
>
> * Recently, the law clinic at some Louisiana law school was banned from
> helping people unless the people being helped could prove they made less
> than some minimum income standard. The reason? People were using the law
> clinic to sue one of the governor's supporters over, I believe, some
> pollution issue. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that this was practicing
> law without a license -- except in the case of the indigent. In other
> words, the court protected the monopoly privilige of lawyers from an actual
> competitor. (I believe this was on either "60 Minutes" a few months ago.)

Sounds typical, though Lousiana's legal system practices Civil Law rather than
Common Law, so I'm not sure how this would be different.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:27:58 MST