The Glade 4.0

If the service they provide is a right, the implication is that they do not own their own labor. I doubt they'll be forced under duress to perform surgeries or anything (not sure I'd trust a doctor being forced to do anything), but I don't agree with the sentiment.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

So people shouldn't have a right to legal counsel when accused of a serious crime?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yeah, that's one of the sticking points for those that claim the government won't mandate medical practice to doctors. They already do it to other professions.

The analogy doesn't quite hold up. Nobody is forced to become a public defender.

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Who said anything about needing to be a public defender? All attorneys (except for a few specific cases such as prosecutors) can be appointed by the judge to represent someone that cannot afford representation. Which honestly, is assinine, since not all attorneys practice the same law, or even try cases in a courtroom and would be familiar with the relevant procedures/etc. Unless it is a capital punishment or federal case, in which case the attorney has to be certified to practice, so not anyone can get appointed.

That is true, and more importantly, criminal justice with any real fairness is essentially impossible without doing so. You need to have prosecutors in order to prosecute criminals, but putting a defendant up against an experienced lawyer is wildly unfair. In fact, before we mandated the ready availability of defense counsel to defendants (who frequently didn't understand they had a right to it) that was probably the biggest weakness of our justice system.

You're not making a "slave" of the lawyer by mandating that he do this. A slave is someone else's posession in his entirity; a master has sole claim to all his labor and controls his entire life, with him being the property of the master in every respect. People like to claim that having to give up some of your labor or money is "slavery" for the same reason that some people like to refer to any military actiont hey don't like as "terrorism". They want the emotional impact of the term because they think it makes their position stronger.

As for the "no one is forced to be a public defender" thing, no one is forced to be a doctor, either, nor is court-appointed defense counsel work limited to public defenders. More importantly, public defenders are just a convenient way to provide access to the criminal defense that people have a right to. If no one became a public defender, we wouldn't just say "**** it, people aren't entitled to criminal defense anymore", we'd just make lawyers participate in some sort of system that gave access to criminal defendants who were indigant in the same way that everyone else is subject to jury duty.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

While there are Public Defender offices, paid for by the same tax dollars that support the Prosecutor's office, there are also contracts for lawyers to act as public defenders in addition to their normal practice (and some attorneys use these contracts to start their practice as a source of income).

And while I disagree with the notion that being appointed to handle a case with no payment is not slavery, its a really deal for the attorney, considering that this does not relieve them of any liability from malpractice has no recourse if the case becomes extremely complicated and impacts his paying clients. (I know an attorney that was appointed an appeals case for someone sentenced in one end of the state, but the "client" was incarcerated 350 miles away.. that attorney was responsible for all costs associated with the appointment, including the travel time, gas, etc to go meet with that client, several times... in the end, it was essentially a frivolous appeal).

Now around here, there are small law practices that deal primarily with taking appointed cases from those attorneys that either 1) don't want to deal with the case, or 2) aren't qualified to handle the case, but at the appointed attorneys cost.

Attorneys do get paid at least a nominal fee for court appointed work. That may be insufficient to cover their expenses, but it is not free.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So it's like jury duty...?

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Similar in many respects, although the pay is not quite the pittance. Generally speaking, lawyers are asked to "sign up" for court-appointed work, and most of the time it can be disposed of with little expense. This is in addition to public defenders.

In this way, we're able to avoid mandating that anyone perform such work if they don't wish to, but if the supply of public defendes and voluntary participants dried up, or wasn't available in an area, you'd have to start making it mandatory. That still doesn't preclude compensation, but without doing so you'd greatly increase the number of convictions.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Here, you don't sign up for it, its a required part of maintaining your law license through the state agency. The only way to not be eligible for appointment is due to conflict of interest (say, being a prosecutor, or a judges clerk) or by voluntarily suspending your license to practice.

That's not what we're talking about. And besides, wouldn't you rather have your own lawyer anyway? I'm sure you've experinced government healthcare in the form of Tricare already...

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It is what we're talking about - whether or not you can mandate that someone provide a service to someone else as a right. You can't just avoid the comparison by saying we're not talking about the comaprison. Duh, of course we aren't. That's what makes it a counterexample.

I'd sure rather have my own lawyer too, but I'm sure you understand that we don't mandate people to take a publicly-provided attorney when they can afford my own, and if I couldn't afford my own attorney I'd certainly rather have one than defend myself because I lack experience in criminal defense.

As for Tricare, I'm not impressed with actual military care of the troops, but the Tricare program served my wife quite well while I was deployed.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Public defenders are hired by the state (either permanent or on a per case basis) for the purpose of providing the -constitutionally mandated- service legal defense for the non paying.

I don't feel it's the same deal. If the state wants to prosecute you for a crime, then it has to see you have a lawyer. You're not entitled to a free lawyer if you want to sue someone, get a divorce, or for any non criminal legal advice.

Not to mention I can say "No thanks, I don't need a lawyer. It's just a traffic citation. I can handle this." Where as once this law goes into effect I can't say "no thanks I don't need insurance. I'm only 30 years old and don't smoke, and can count on my fingers the amount of times I've seen a doctor since becoming an adult."

Also aside from footing the bill, the government gets almost no say in how the service is provided, other than to say it has to be provided competently.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

All that is true but none of it changes the fact that when you are a criminal defendant you have a right to someone else's services.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's because the law, by necessity and through any application, is a public good. In this way lawyers are no different than police officers. Heathcare is an entirely different animal.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I agree with this wholeheartedly

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Return the words to my mouth, for you have taken them.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

This is only sometimes correct, and probably varies state to state. Here, if you record all your time and expenses, and if the expenses are deemed appropriate by the state agency in charge, and if there is still money left in the budget (which usually runs out within 3 months), you can get reimbursed at around $60/hr. However, if you are appointed and those funds are already depleted (75%+ of the time), you are doing the mandated work pro-bono. The time it takes to fill out all the paper work can double the amount of time it takes to do the case, and a lot don't bother, because the money isn't there anyway. Several have sued on the grounds this violates the taking clause of the Constitution, but haven't succeeded yet.

It would not surprise me the Fed mandates that the doctors have to perform services, for which they will have to apply to the state level Medicare department, and you end up with a very similiar situation. Once the allocated money runs out for reimbursing doctors, the will be no more payment for doctor's time, which they will be legally required to provide.

That is exactly the point. Healthcare is different. I'm glad someone finally pointed it out.

In other words, the "you can't have a right to someone else's services" argument isn't universally true. Something can be a right when it is not otherwise possible to administrate society in any equitable manner. Healthcare, however, is not one of those things nor are most other products. Criminal defense services are the exception, not the rule, because they fulfill that special condition.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I disagree with the idea that something that has only been around for a few decades could possibly be considered a "human right." If we have a right to modern healthcare, then that means for tens of thousands of years humans have constantly had their rights infringed upon by them not having access to things like heart transplants. If healthcare is a right, then we are infringing on the rights of billions of people living in third world countries by not providing them with free healthcare.

Everyone I've talked to that believes healthcare is a right likes to say things like "In this modern age, in a nation as advanced as the US, healthcare should be a right." They inevitably put restrictions on who has the right to healthcare according to what country they are in and the time period in which they live. I think this greatly cheapens the idea of human rights. It inevitably supports the idea that rights are not universal and that some groups of people have rights that others do not. It's a major step backwards.

Amanar, I don't believe rights are universal, it is dependent on what is given to you by the collective community.

Do you also believe that community has the right to define itself in ways that limit inclusiveness?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

sure as long as they understand and accept the possible negatives that comes with that sort of exclusion.

So you believe that not only does man have the "right" to determine what his own rights are, he also has the "right" to determine the rights of others, even if these two sets are at odds with each other, and as such are at odds with what the very definition of a right is?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20