I just read an article in the Sunday NYT opinion section by Jed Handelsman Shugerman, (henceforth JHS) entitled “A Historic Prosecution Is Also A Legal Embarrassment”.
The author, A law professor at Fordham and Boston University, has objections about this case that focus on procedural steps, matters of jurisdictions, and how the prosecution is being conducted by Manhattan. JHS argues that his concern is law and order. He claims that “The Trump case damages the rule of law and sets a troubling precedent.”
The article is about legal rules, minutiae and procedure. It is not about law and order. JHS completely leaves out the hush money crime or discuss or argue the legality or illegality of Trump’s involvement in it. So where, really, is the discussion about law and order?
The article posits that the technical aspects of litigation are what make law and order. When you ask most regular people what law and order means to them, I think you get an answer that generally states that law and order are about protection and safety and the fair and impartial delivery of justice, and is not about the fine detailed arguments about how court cases and legal proceedings are conducted.
If he is truly concerned about public legitimacy, maybe JHS should consider what most people actually believe law in order is and ask himself:
Is law and order the procedural details and minutiae that form the parameters in which the legal profession works?
Or, is law and order, in the broad public mind set, more about serving justice and not how it’s done?
JHS argues that the 34 charges of the NY indictment are “half charges.” Even after reading his explanation of that term, I still don’t know what he means or what he is intent on doing using it. But I am assuming that the Grand Jury and/or prosecutorial team that determined and wrote the 34 charges against Trump in this case were instructed on how to properly construct and write their charges to fit within legal parameters. I doubt that the Grand Jury and/or prosecutorial team was instructed to write anything that was “half” anything but real charges, no matter how they are presented in a press conference.
The author, it seems to me, has condemned the Grand Jury with his opinion that it did not do its job and that somehow its product just doesn’t meet legal standards. He argues that the indictment by NY follow the precedent of Robert Mueller and that the state and city of NY do as Mr. Mueller did and follow his example. Is there a rule or a standard that dictates that one jurisdiction has to or should follow the exact same procedural and steps that other jurisdictions have followed in order for them to be valid? I didn’t think so.
JHS also argues that because of the delay of six years in proceeding with this case that it is now somehow of less interest and that the need for this trial and allowing for the justice system to follow its course is dimiinished? What he did not mention in mentioning delay is that within that timeline of six years, Trump was involved in two political campaigns and was president for 4 of those six years during which time, legal actions were either frozen or proscribed because of immunity. But the desire to seek justice never abated during that time.
I would like Mr. JHS to consider if what he thinks of as law and order is really just the infrastructure of the legal system itself (he didn’t even mention the other half of order of law and order, the enforcement of law by law enforcement agencies, so he really was only addressing half of what we normally think of as law and order) or the actual administration of justice and law aside from bickering over differences of procedure and minutiae in the law.
If you want to know about public legitimacy of justice, ask the public if what it is concerned about is the fair and impartial delivery of justice, or about how lawyers and the legal profession do what they do and the rules and standards that they follow as a profession.
thoughtprivacyandliberty.com 