650 V O L . 8 0 P A R T 5 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 2 THE ADVOCATE
up more than 30,000 false or misleading statements made by Donald Trump
during his presidency. The attorney general was not exactly rushing to correct
the record in every instance. While it is perhaps telling that Barr’s
memoir is titled One Damn Thing After Another, it is troubling that whereas
he testified that the “bullshit” was one of the reasons he decided to resign,
his resignation letter makes no reference to it. Instead, he praised the president
for the “unprecedented achievements you have delivered for the
American people”.
The more important part of Barr’s testimony quoted above, though, is the
part that talks about the inability to live in a world where positions unsupported
by evidence hold any sway whatsoever. As members of the legal profession,
do any of us need to be convinced of this fact? Together with
scientists (and the professions science informs), lawyers are among those
usually completely obsessed with the notion that evidence is necessary to
support, advance and sustain a position. Judges rely on experts to opine on
matters outside of the judicial area of knowledge, so that an informed and
principled decision can be made, but they will not permit an expert to
merely opine without an evidentiary foundation. Our entire system of
criminal and civil justice is dependent upon reason, intellect, wisdom and,
above all, evidence. Indeed, we have entire courses and textbooks dedicated
to the law of evidence.
Evidence, and the ability to synthesize it, scrutinize it, analyze it and
accept or reject it, are at the very core of almost every analysis a lawyer
does. Why, then, does it seem to go out the window when people talk about
emotionally charged topics or political viewpoints? It would be easy enough
to wade into one or more of the controversial topics plaguing the legal profession
at the moment, but for fear of these thoughts getting lost in the topic
itself and someone entirely missing the point, let us turn to something not
exactly disputed any more: the complete lack of evidence of weapons of
mass destruction used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Those of us who watched the build-up to that war (unless we were walking
around draped in flags or perhaps holding shares in a company that
manufactures bombs) were fairly skeptical about the claimed justifications
for that war. The stated intent to “disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction,
to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi
people” seemed to lack only one thing: evidence. If you are going to claim
that a world leader is developing weapons of mass destruction and poses an
immediate threat to his neighbours and the world community, surely the
burden is on you to produce the evidence of such a claim. One ought to
have, for example, evidence of weapons of mass destruction readily at hand.