Osler's Razor

At the Stanford Symposium on Friday, the students had arranged an incredibly provocative lunchtime debate on the proposition "Good people should not become prosecutors."  The idea comes from the writings of Georgetown Law Prof Paul Butler, who argued in support of the idea and has written about it extensively.

One of the problems, of course, is that this question rests on the fiction (promoted by movies and television) that the world is divided into good and evil people.  In reality, we all do good and bad things, in different measure and effect.  The same way almost no one remembers themselves as being particularly popular in high school, hardly anyone considers themselves "evil."

As I talked about later in the day, I disagree with the proposition even with that caveat.  I do think good people (even some of the best) choose to be prosecutors, and I often encourage my own students to make that choice.

I do that because I think it is good for them and good for the world.  Prosecutors do have a lot of discretion, and some misuse it.  But the job will not disappear if good people avoid it.  It will just lack their engagement with principle and meaning.

Within Christianity, we sometimes talk about vocation.  I do think that some people have the vocation of prosecutor.  It isn't an easy vocation, either, because to do it right is emotionally engaging and wearying.  It is all tragedy.  There is no victory when you win a case, no sense of joy.  Still… we need the good people to do it, and hope that doing it well will make all of us better.