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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   14417 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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Most of the judicial opinions that form the law of the land are written primarily not by judges in black robes but by anonymous clerks whose names are nowhere in the text. (…) To even ask for these things reflects an entire misunderstanding of how work works, of the whole idea of a professional.

I think there's an interesting tension here. If we're looking at the position of judicial clerk as just a menial job within a capitalist economy - there's stuff that needs doing, the market selects for the most efficient person willing to do them for what they're worth - then I get you. But if, de facto, the opinions of judicial clerks genuinely shape the law of the land, then it's clearly unjust for able-bodied fast workers to be over-represented among them. Accommodations that allow for disabled lawyers to work those jobs will lead to kinder, better laws where disability accommodations are concerned.

(Of course, some might argue the problem starts at "judicial legal clerks hired off the street have an outsized influence on the law of the land". Perhaps it would make more sense for anyone with that much power to be elected, or otherwise more clearly accountable to the public; we could then restrict these kinds of disability accommodations to the accountable elected public servants, without needing to provide them for the genuinely politically-irrelevant coffee-fetcher.)

I think there's an interesting tension here. If we're looking at the position of judicial clerk as just a menial job within a capitalist economy - there's stuff that needs doing, the market selects for the most efficient person willing to do them for what they're worth - then I get you. But if, de facto, the opinions of judicial clerks genuinely shape the law of the land, then it's clearly unjust for able-bodied fast workers to be over-represented among them. Accommodations that allow for disabled lawyers to work those jobs will lead to kinder, better laws where disability accommodations are concerned.

Kinder and better are at tension with respect to laws concerning disability accommodations.

Certainly I can see why someone would think that. Personally I believe that kindness is the overriding moral imperative governing human behavior; therefore insofar as laws serve to constrain and standardize human behavior, they should strive to be kind before anything else. The only thing that you should trade kindness against when designing laws, IMO, is the long-term survival of the legal system itself - which might apply to things like violent crime and even immigration, but surely not disability accommodations.

Kindness, even among other vague descriptors, seems like an exceedingly terrible terminal goal to have. Kindness could justify just about any atrocity, terrible system of governance, or scheme. Is it kind to allow a third generation of imbecile, allow colonizers to continue to poison mother earth with their existence, or even to fail to secure a future for a people?

You could say that you are talking about net kindness, but that doesn't solve any issue because any unkindness can be weighed as worth the cost, and humans are notorious for not weighting the unkindness done to others against kindness done to them fairly.

Kindness runs into the problem that kindness to one person is often unkindness to another. Which means your system devolves to who/whom.... who is deserving of kindness and to whom it can be told that they can just suck it up.

kindness to one person is often unkindness to another

Not necessarily.

Some comments above I wrote some suggested accommodations in school where one is being allowed to return assignments late but reducing significant amount of points for that. How is that unkind to people who return theirs in time? They get better grade while in turn the late returner doesn't get an automatic fail.

Kindness to one person may be unkindness to another but this isn't remotely axiomatic like it's treated here.

The teacher/TA that is doing the grading would likely prefer to have all their work ready at once rather than piecemeal as it trickles in, especially because they will often have more than one class to grade and those classes have many sequential assignments so added time for one pushes into the time for the next.

It might not even be kind to the student asking for more time, as the extra time they take for this assignment/chapter bleeds into the time they have available for the next one. Even extra test time eats into the time they have available for other classes, relaxation, and extra-curriculars.

Not necessarily, but frequently enough to be a serious problem that doesn't get much attention and thus sabotages the goodwill necessary in cases where it isn't.

You could spend the GDP on disability accommodations and still leave the disabled complaining. Such is the path to ruin.

So what if he is mediocre? There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they? We can’t have all Brandeises, Cardozos, and Frankfurters and stuff like that there. -- Senator Roman L. Hruska (who, unsurprisingly, did not persuade his colleagues on this nomination)

I disagree. I think smarter people do a better job for everyone. I think it is incumbent upon all entrusted with Other People's Money to spend it well, and that means getting as much work for as little as you can pay. Anyway the subset of laws related to disability is small, hearing the voices of the disabled can be achieved through things like Amicus briefs in the few decisive cases. But at any rate, we should probably cut off this thread of argument because I don't want to do that annoying thing where I provide additional details from my real world example that I didn't provide initially in order to refute your points which you made in good faith based on your limited knowledge of the situation, and I feel like that's going to become inevitable fast.

A little learning is a dangerous thing ; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring : There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.

Sheer intelligence is very valuable, but it's not actually that important in the bulk of jobs (although there's a clear floor that you want people to be above). Diligence and consistency, paired with a moderatively above average level of intelligence, seems like the sweet spot for most jobs. I'm not sure the legal system really needs brilliant people to implement correctly; and, to the extent it does, that's a failing of the legal system.

Accommodations that allow for disabled lawyers to work those jobs will lead to kinder, better laws where disability accommodations are concerned.

Your use of the word "kinder" is rather a transparent applause light. I don't doubt that disabled lawmakers would be more likely to pass laws or make legal judgements which will favour the interests of disabled people (at least in the short-term), but I'm not at all persuaded that this would be beneficial for society at large.

I mean, sure, if a country which passed a law which made it illegal for an employer to fire anyone with a disability, I guess this would be "kinder" to any currently gainfully employed disabled people. But I would have a hard time describing such a law as "better" legislation than what a reasonable person would come up with.

I actually used "kinder" as well as "better" specifically to be transparent about the fact that I consider kindness an inherently valuable quality for a law to possess, for moral reasons, separately from other ways in which a policy can be "good" for society (i.e. instrumentally). Because I wanted to avoid people saying I was begging the question by simply saying "better" and taking it for granted that kinder laws are better. I'm at a loss as to how else I could have communicated my point at this point.

Because I wanted to avoid people saying I was begging the question by simply saying "better" and taking it for granted that kinder laws are better.

That's exactly how your original comment came off to me.

Also you seem to have an unorthodox definition of "kind".

But if, de facto, the opinions of judicial clerk genuinely shape the law of the land, then it's clearly unjust for able-bodied fast workers to be over-represented among them. Accommodations that allow for disabled lawyers to work those jobs will lead to kinder, better laws where disability accommodations are concerned.

This is not, in fact, clearly the more just outcome. Your argument is circular; you're assuming that "kinder" disability accommodations are desirable and using that to argue that judicial clerks should obtain those accommodations.

Not really. My preferred policy would be for disabled people to get guaranteed allocations, which they get to keep even if they then choose to be proactive and get extra money from gainful employment (at which they would not get these kinds of accommodations). This is noticeably different from the accommodations which I believe should be provided to democratically-elected members of the government so as to allow disabled people an equal shot at shaping government policy. I have no doubt you disagree with this, but I don't think it's circular - both halves simply flow from the same underlying premise of "kindness is good".

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