By Paul Weiser
One of present-day government's favorite remedies to a perceived ill which is obviously not, or is not obviously criminal is to "assist" plaintiffs in civil suits. The iniquities of this supposed remedy are so huge it's hard to believe anyone has ever seriously examined them.
It is not merely (as some have mentioned) that government pays plaintiff's lawyers with money it forcibly extracts from the defendant in taxes. This is iniquitous, but scarcely unprecedented (look at divorce, for example, where the husband must pay both lawyers far more directly). No, the problem is much more encompassing and overarching.
When the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) or Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) helps a deadbeat sue his landlord or a race-whiner sue his employer, government involves itself against an individual. Criminal law has long and justly recognized the severe imbalance inherent in such a case, and evolved many protections and advantages for the accused to at least partially redress them - the requirements for proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and timely providing the defense with all exculpatory evidence, for example. The pretense of civil rather than criminal procedure allows government to "go upon" (as Magna Carta puts it) a defendant stripped of these protections.
Second, and perhaps more seriously, government persecution disguised in a civil suit is itself criminal abuse of the civil law. Specifically, the crimes in question are champerty (buying an interest in a civil suit) and barratry (stirring up lawsuits) - both important though presently disused protections against lawsuit abuse.
The fact is, government-assisted "civil" lawsuits are an inexplicable and unjustifiable evil, and must be recognized and forbidden as such. They go beyond simple unconstitutional regulation, which lets agencies write laws never passed by Congress, all the way to naked power assaults upon citizens under cover of the civil law.
None of Your Lib (NOLIB) is a weekly column, appearing
each Monday. Email responses and requests
to Paul Weiser
- be sure to specify in the body of the message that
your mail is to NOLIB. Some past articles are in the
NOLIB archives, and you are also invited to
visit
my home page. All responses
are appreciated,
and may be incorporated into succeeding columns in whole
or in part unless the sender requests otherwise. And of
course, the opinions expressed are those of the columnist and
may
not reflect the views or opinions of gte.net.