I know a law-student would be. She is an aspiring human rights lawyer. She studies ardently the relevant fields such as international politics and also French, probably for the purpose of working in Geneva. She is intelligent and dedicated, and I have no doubt that she will achieve her goal of being a high-ranking human rights lawyer. I have admired her dedication and her passion for her goals. I tend to have respect for people with clear goals they have for their lives. But she suffers from a character flaw: she is deeply prejudicial.
When we are angry or at least frustrated, we vent to people we know. In many cases, venting is beneficial for our health in that we relieve our stress. But in some cases, we vent to conform our peers' opinion to agree with ours. It is a psychological response which takes root in our pride; we tend to feel more proud as the number of people who agree with us increases. Further, this form of venting would often put ourselves as the good guys of the story, distorting information to our advantage bit by bit every time we tell the story over. It is contrary to talking with a person directly, listening to that person's perspective while telling ours, trying to find a fair ground. This malicious venting, then, would in turn be gossiping and our mode of affirming our prejudice.
Without me knowing, I found out that I "got to her." She is a hard-left leaning person and I a right-leaning centrist. I suppose some conservative things I said irritated her greatly... Not to mention how I questioned the veracity of her reasoning on Facebook once, a topic I will touch in the next paragraph. I found that she would say negative things to one of my dearest friends, attempting to shape the opinion my friend has toward me, pleasantly disguised as a venting session. She succeeded to a degree. This friend of mine took a joke I told her, and this joke is something she would normally recognize as a joke, as a slight against her. I was of course deeply hurt. And all this nonsense is attributed to a single prejudicial individual manipulating her surrounding to affirm her unjust prejudice against me.
Let us now talk of this Facebook thing. I have observed her over a long period of time posting prejudicial statements on Facebook and saying such statements in public repeatedly. I'd like to talk of one incident that I faultily engaged by impulse. Not to reveal too much detail, she said something along the lines of "Texas is inherently sexist against women." I suspect that her hard-left leaning attitude made her a zealot of the ideal that the conservative ideals are racist/sexist/bigots. Just so happens, Texas is a red state. I simply questioned her reasoning that the whole state is sexist because of one instance she observed to be sexist. It is a classic "individuals do not equate to the whole" logic, and a mistake people make too many times. Yes, it is true that some Texans are still backwards. But the state, for the most part, respect women. For one, some major cities are liberal. Further, many conservative individuals respect women more than those sexually liberal people who tend to treat individuals as means to their sexual ends. Here, her prejudice against the conservative ideals made her make a logical mistake that should not be made by a good lawyer.
It is of no small irony how a person willing to fight for justice is herself heavily disposed toward passing unjust judgments through prejudice. Relevant to her dream job, this prejudicial attitude is prevalent among prosecutors. It turns out that many of the people who pursue a career in civil service against crime pursue the careers with excessive zeal for the just cause well beyond the noble limit. The zeal, however much noble, can become base when the zeal turns to prejudicial disposition. We see many examples of this, how some officers can have biased attitudes against certain people. Like so, many prosecutors tend to have prejudice against the people they prosecute, often being in denial of the fact that an innocent person can be found guilty by the court, that it is a conceivably possible consequence that can be delivered by their own hands.
During trials, many prosecutors would gather around the DA office kitchen during lunch break and reinforce to each other the prejudice against people they are trying at the moment. The bias is understandable. Being a prosecutor is a great burden on one's conscience, for the obvious consequences of the prosecution winning a case. Human psyche tends to circumvent the unpleasantness like torn conscience. Like an immature woman who cheated on her boyfriend avoiding him at all costs and making nonsensical excuses for her wrongdoing, they would crawl to the safety of their prejudice birthed by pride rather than to bear the weight of their station. This attitude is of course dangerous. When they go into their cases with their minds already seeing the man on trial as a criminal, they would be liable to interpret evidence in a sly way or try to lead witnesses to fit their theory better. Worse yet, they might try to forge new evidences for they believe that they must at times act outside the law to convict a guilty man. These are habits that can get an innocent man in prison. To be sure, most people who get convicted are guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. But many are not.
Other kinds of lawyers are not immune to this sort of prejudicial display as they are fallen beings like we all are. The above-mentioned behaviors noted are not exclusive to lawyers or people pursuing a legal career, but rather behaviors that are common to all human beings. I hope that I have provided enough of a profile for the reader to comprehend.
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