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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Personally, I favor the fruitcake approach: be honest with yourself, present what you believe--but only after due mention of those nasty imbecils that are obviously dead wrong.

And, of course, prepare for the worse in your teaching career.

Here's to the fruitcakes!

http://www.capyblanca.com/2...

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

>it's the job of plaintiff and defendant to be as biased as possible in their own favor ...

That's not a fault, that's a virtue. A lawyer might believe that an argument in his client's favor is biased or untrue -- but he might be wrong, to the detriment of his client.

Suppose the lawyer, believing argument X to be a bad one, advances it anyway, and it convinces the judge. Should the lawyer not have advanced it? Why should he have assumed that his reasoning was better than the judge's?

The system we have now rewards a lawyer for advancing a subtly-wrong argument, but punishes him for an argument that's so obviously wrong and biased that it peeves off the judge or jury. That seems to me to be quite reasonable.

The "unbiased truth finding" should be left to the judge and jury, and not the lawyers.

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