You know, the practice of law really makes one confront that. I recall a case where I had a rather contentious set of issues, on which motions to dismiss had been denied, and it was before a judge whose rulings I often really thought were not well considered. I went to the first status conference and discovered that the judge was a close old friend of counsel for my opponent – they had practiced together in the bad old days of Philadelphia legal life, when Jews (which they were, and I was not) could only get jobs in Jewish law firms, and they knew each other well.
At a point like that, you can be a horrible advocate, give up, and say to yourself, “well, the judge is friends with my opponent. I don’t like his rulings even on a good day, and this isn’t looking like a good day. Nothing good can come of this.”
Oddly enough, I learned a great lesson here, because my attitude was even worse than that: I thought that I was so badly on the outs on this one that I was going to have to attack the judge’s ruling on some jurisdictional issues, when that ruling came, in a petition for mandamus relief before the Court of Appeals – definitely a hail-mary sort of move, but one which, on balance, looked like it was probably worth doing here.
So, what’d I do? I wrote the best motion for summary judgment I had ever written – I didn’t let an evidentiary issue get through the seams anywhere. I documented the heck out of every fact upon which I needed to rely, with exhaustive citations to the supporting evidence. I didn’t really think the judge would be fair to me. What I did think was that if I was going to do a mandamus hail-mary, I needed to have made the clearest record I could.
And, you know what? The judge ruled in my favor. The man I thought was unpersuadable, and entirely disinclined to persuasion, was persuaded.
One can always punt: “well, I can see that your preconceptions prevent you from fairly considering my argument.” Sure. One can always do that. But it is often basically a concession that you have no argument worth putting.
I get told all the time by Christians that my views are too fixed to be changed. I find this hilarious. My views on all manner of things – political, social, economic, philosophical – have been changed 180 degrees at times by persuasive marshalling of evidence and argument. Never by arguments of the quality that tend to make up the bulk of Christian apologetics, however. Good arguments. Persuasive arguments. Arguments backed by persuasive evidence and well made.
Apologetics, at least, is well named. It has so very, very much to apologize for.
