AMST 3822 Chapter 11: Lowering the Bar chapter 11
20 Feb 2019
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The tone of joking about lawyers has moved from mockery, sometimes gentle and sometimes caustic, to mean-spirited scorn and aggression. Number of lawyers has multiplied as law has expanded and become more pervasive, casting its shadow in every corner of our lives. Some disappointed that law failed to deliver on promises of remedy and protection, others embraced a jaundiced view of legal system in which the problem was too much law and the perpetrators are lawyers. The lawyers in jokes tend to be engaged in the pursuit of private interests, being resourceful and clever but at most middling moral stature. Public opinion tracks many aspects of the jaundiced view of the legal system as does much in the joke corpus. The joke corpus pays no special heed to claimants or to corporations. There is an abiding sense that the system favors the rich and powerful and that lawyers promote and benefit from this disparity.
