Legal Ethics and Reform

Legal Systems and Dissimulation

America and Great Britain have the adversary legal system, not the inquiry system found in Germany, Italy, France, and Spain.

In the adversary system the opposing sides selectively emphasize some facts and denigrate other facts often using dramatic devices and rhetorical flourishes. These tactics are used as lawyers make motions, conduct discovery, enter objections, examine witnesses, and deliver closing arguments. This is done to cast their own facts in the best possible light and to cast the other side's facts in the worst possible light.

It's clear an adversary legal system requires that lawyers be skilled in the arts of dissimulation - a form of lying - that involves the fervent telling of half truths and the skillful misleading of others through verbal indirection.