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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, November 06 2012 @ 02:02 PM EST |
A very reasoned response.
As a possible counterexample, consider the Court of Appeals for the Federal
Court and what it has done to software with its stand on patents. We have a
situation in which almost certainly all of those judges are very learned and
experienced people, who have years of experience in patent law and intellectual
property law in general. They were vetted and chosen based upon that expertise.
But to a very large number of affected people their pronouncements seem to be
based in sheer insanity. In spite of their years of expertise and their legal
objectivity, they seem to have come up with some real classics of
"judge-made law" and are a demonstration of what some would surely
characterize as a runaway judicial system which is causing great harm to the
rest of society.
I am sure that if people, such as programmers, who work in the areas most
negatively affected by the actions of this court, could vote they would produce
many negative votes for some of those judges. Would we say, then, that these are
people who are not skilled in the law and who are only reacting to some
hot-button issues and are flying off the handle about it?
Obviously, we do not think that we are a bunch of bad children who are just
overreacting to some hot-button issue. We are convinced that we are right and
that the actions of courts like the CAFC are wrong and might potentially run the
economy and the underpinnings of society off a cliff, quite in spite of the
great erudition of those judges.
Now, extrapolate the above to some other hot-button issues. Regardless of our
individual stands on any such hot button issues, there is one thing on which we
all must agree: that the legal system has to come down with decisions which
people understand and respect, or else it turns into something which people
start to disrespect. And then we are on dangerous ground.
As I said, the selection of judges by the "experts" does not seem to
be a panacea, either.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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