Ever wonder why your attorney, or the attorney of your loved one, is not fighting as hard for you or your loved one as you believe they should be? Ever wonder why the attorney sometimes leaves evidence untouched? Ever wonder why the attorney seemingly abandons a defense to the peril of their client? Here is the answer.
If we look at Chapter 7, section 4 of the Corpus Juris Secundum, which sets out the attorney and client relationship, we find this!
“His first duty is the the court and the public, not to the client, and whenever the duties to his client conflict with those he owes as an office of the court in administration of justice, the former must yield to the latter.”
What the means in simple terms is that the first duty an attorney owes is to the court, and wherever the interest of the court in administration of justice is in conflict with the interest of the client, the duty to the court must come first.
Let’s think about this for a second. Presume that the person being charged with a crime is actually innocent of any wrongdoing, yet they are charged anyway. We would assume that the administration of justice would demand the innocent person be released. That is a fair by incorrect assumption.
The reason this is an incorrect assumption is because in the administration of justice, the primary concern of the court, the judge, and every member of the State Bar is to ensure the integrity and reputation of the judicial system as being correct! A simple thought experiment will prove this out. Google “exonerees in my state” and read the reports. In every report, we will find the statement from the District Attorney, in some States this is also called the Prosecutor, that goes something like, “even though the court has dismissed the case, we [or I, or my office] still believe [they] committed [the crime].” There is no consideration that the judicial system may have made a mistake. There is not even the slightest hint of doubt that the judicial system blew it.
The reason for this is simple. If the judicial system is flawed, and all man made things are flawed, then to what level should the People trust it? Instead of opening this pandora’s box, the public trustees work diligently to wrap its flaws in the illusion of infallibility. corpus juris secundum