Appellate Law

A strange conception of ?legal?

By S. COTUS

Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch has an interesting concept of ?the law.? Granted, I understand that he is talking to non-lawyers, and there is no legal or ethical obligation not to talk down to them. 

Anyway, he writes to the blog ?Not for Nothing? about his support for ?Telcom Immunity.?:

The ACLU statement is flat-out wrong in several key respects. First, the activities that the ACLU is calling "illegal" have not been determined to be illegal by any court.  Therefore, this term is an opinion as opposed to a fact.

Guess what?  ?Legal? and ?illegal? are all matters of opinion. It is just that some ?opinions? matter more than others. For instance, there are many nutjobs out there that think that they don?t have to pay income taxes. Just like Lynch, they say this is a ?fact.?  (I say it is a "stupid position.")  However, the courts disagree with them. My guess is that there are many other tax cheats out there that are not paying their taxes, but no court has specifically said so.  Does this make the requirement that we file tax returns  merely an opinion? Lynch seems to be under the strange impression that only he can provide a view of the law that isn?t an ?opinion.? But, again, he is writing to non-lawyers, and he doesn?t need to take them seriously, so he can write several paragraphs of twaddle about national security without providing any citations.  Lawyers should demand more from a chief law enforcement officer and member of the bar.

Full post as published by Appellate Law and Practice on January 22, 2008 (boomark / email).