Letters

From the July 1994 issue

(Page 2 of 4)

Before we all get too bent out of shape over Billary's health reform, just remember: Good old American know-how will prevail! New hospitals, new medical schools, and new doctor's offices--full of all the specialists and fee-for-service doctors your heart could desire--will rise next to the casinos. Only those of us not living near an Indian reservation, the Mexican border, or an offshore island nation will be inconvenienced by Bill and Hillary's foray into socialized medicine.

Roy Warren West
Philadelphia, PA

Contingent Truths

I was intrigued by Ida L. Walters's article "Temping Fate" (Apr.) because I've been one of those "disposable" workers, by happy choice, since 1975. What I would really like to know is why anyone thinks we are a "problem."

As a technical writer and logistics engineer, I've worked for commercial companies and defense contractors from coast to coast and border to border on a contractual basis for 18 years and hope to continue to do so indefinitely. For my efforts I receive more pay, not less, than "captive" employees. The higher discretionary income allows me to plan for my own benefits as best suits me. Job security, I learned long ago, is not working a lifetime for one employer and then retiring; job security is being very good at what you do combined with a willingness to go anywhere in the country, or world, to do it.

But our way of life is under governmental attack. In recent years the very concept of consulting has been redefined, grossly interfering with our constitutional right to contract directly with a client and instead forcing most of us to become W-2 employees of independent contracting firms that in turn contract our services to the client. And we've now been denied the right to deduct our very substantial away-from-home expenses if an out-of-town job lasts more than a year, a situation that will harm both client and contract employee, since most of us will quit and return home before the year, and the job, is up.

Ms. Walters claims there's a hidden agenda behind the "myth" of the contingent work force: a desire by the Labor Department and the unions to control the "problem" to their own benefit. While I don't doubt her assessment of these two power-hungry entities, most of us in this industry identify the true culprit as the IRS. As Tom Bethell pointed out in "The Mother of All Rights" in the same issue: "`It was only as the bedouin could be induced to settle and invest in immovable objects that they could be controlled.' For `controlled,' read `taxed,' which is to say: expropriated." It's far easier to control, tax, and expropriate a stationary work force than it is to dominate the nomadic lifestyle of the freedom-loving contract employee.

Garry L. Reed
Ft. Worth, TX

Jury Duty Virginia Postrel brings out a fundamental paradox of American criminal justice: A jury, consisting of ordinary people, is bound to follow the law and may only evaluate the credibility of evidence and testimony; the jury may only decide facts and render a decision of guilt or inno-cence based upon the law. On the other hand, judges are bound to uphold the law and to instruct the jury properly on the law.

The results of some sensationalized criminal trials have led many observers, including Ms. Postrel, to conclude that judges or juries in general are shirking their responsibility to ensure that perpetrators of violent crimes go to jail. As a matter of law, such generalizations are misplaced.

When instructing a jury, a judge should keep in mind that American law is based upon fundamental morality. A keen judge, sorting out the irrelevant issues in a case, should remember that American law is rooted in the basic principle that an individual is responsible (and liable) for his or her own actions. Bearing this in mind, a judge will limit the availability of the insanity defense and discourage arguments that other people, agencies, or laws sanction or encourage violent behavior. Criminal defendants will thereby be viewed less frequently as victims and more often as individuals responsible for their own actions.

Ms. Postrel confuses morality with personal bias and forgets the role of the prosecutor in screening jurors when she writes, "A good defense lawyer will screen out potential jurors willing to
make moral judgments." To suggest
that "our juries have gone soft on crime" implies that a jury should be permitted
to render a verdict based on its collective bias.

Roy A. Barry
Melville, NY

There has been no clearer principle of English or American law than that in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of the jury to judge what are the facts and what is the law and what is the moral intent of the accused, it is also their right and primary and paramount duty to judge the justice of the law and to hold all laws invalid that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive and all persons guiltless in violating such laws. (See "An Essay on the Trial by Jury," by Lysander Spooner.)

Juries are not permitted to take the responsibility which is truly theirs because judges uniformly require potential jurors to take an oath not to question any rule of law given to them in the jury instructions. In so doing, the judicial system is subverting the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury.

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