In Law School Facts Are Not Facts
From Letters of Marque:Â
Today in criminal law we learned that facts are not, in fact, facts. They are questions for the jury. Anything that is a question for the jury is a fact, even if it is an opinion. An opinion, on the other hand, is the thing that a judge writes. It may contain a lot of things that are, in fact, facts, and it may decide that although something might have been a question of fact, it is in fact not a fact.
I’m putting this with my other useful law school definitions, like “moral responsibility is not legal responsibility”, “actual detriment is not legal detriment”.
The thing is–and I’m not sure if this is scary or not–it makes sense. They’re just defining legal vocabulary. It’s not the same thing as regular people’s vocabulary. That doesn’t make it wrong or even immoral; it just makes it different. It starts to become wrong, and maybe even immoral, if you then assume that legal vocabulary can be indiscriminately applied in the real world without sufficient notice.
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